II 


BL  181  .S6  1913 
Smyth,  Newman,  1843-1925 
Constructive  natural 
theology 


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Published  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


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CONSTRUCTIVE 
NATURAL  THEOLOGY 


CONSTRUCTIVE 
NATURAL  THEOLOGY 


BY 


NEWMAN   SMYTH 


v 


$*' 


: 


md£ 


DEC   8  1915 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK     :     :     :     :     :     1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  September,  1913 


PREFACE 

/T*HE  number  of  thoughtful  persons  is  in- 
creasing  who  desire  to  know  in  what  state 
a  full  acceptance  of  the  results  of  scientific  re- 
search shall  leave  our  cherished  human  faiths 
and  hopes.  They  sometimes  ask,  Are  we  in- 
deed to  lose  our  life  and  the  ideals  that  make 
it  most  worth  living  for  the  sake  of  gaining 
a  whole  world  of  material  knowledge?  Shall 
nature  be  divested  of  its  spiritual  beauty  and 
meaning  as  science  takes  reason  behind  the 
scenes  and  discloses  the  machinery  of  the  stage 
on  which  the  passing  generations  play  their 
transient  part? 

The  writer  of  these  pages  has  long  been  con- 
vinced that  the  scientific  revelations  of  the 
processes  of  nature,  and  of  our  own  lives  as 
facts  of  nature,  should  all  be  religiously  ac- 
cepted; and  that  the  working  theories  also 
which  are  generally  received  in  the  scientific 
world,  should  provisionally,  at  least,  be  recog- 


vi  PREFACE 

nized  in  theological  thinking.  With  this  con- 
viction the  assurance  has  grown  that  the  mod- 
ern sciences  not  only  reopen  old  problems  of 
philosophy,  but  also  afford  fresh  and  rich  ma- 
terial for  religious  thought  to  gather  and  to 
use  as  vitalizing  means  of  its  own  spirit.  The 
sciences  have  gained  full  enough  new  knowl- 
edge to  prepare  the  way  for  a  new  spiritual 
interpretation  of  nature.  Yet  in  these  fields, 
already  white  for  the  harvest,  the  theological 
laborers  are  few. 

The  ultimate  problem  toward  which  alike  the 
natural  sciences  and  our  spiritual  faiths  lead  up, 
is  the  meaning  of  personality  as  a  fact  in  na- 
ture. While  engaged  in  preparing  for  future 
publication  a  volume  relating  to  this  central 
problem,  of  final  significance,  upon  which  many 
lines  of  inquiry  converge,  the  opportunity  came 
to  me  to  deliver  a  brief  course  of  lectures  upon 
the  Taylor  Foundation  of  the  Yale  School  of 
Religion.  Doctor  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor  was 
one  of  a  succession  of  theologians  in  New  Eng- 
land who  accepted  and  used  the  science  of 
their  times  in  their  reasoning  from  the  works 
of  God.     But   to   follow  in  this  respect  their 


PREFACE  vii 

example  would  require  of  us  in  our  day  an 
abandonment  of  a  merely  neutral  position  and 
suspicious  attitude  toward  science,  and  a  posi- 
tive reconstruction  of  philosophical  and  relig- 
ious views  of  nature  and  ourselves.  Religious 
education  from  the  Sunday-school  to  the  uni- 
versity, and  in  the  trained  and  reverent  free- 
dom of  the  pulpit,  should  follow  a  constructive 
scientific  principle,  and  keep  close  to  the  facts 
of  nature  and  life,  if  spiritual  faith  is  to  live 
anew;  Lowell's  lines,  in  the  "Cathedral,"  af- 
ford an  excellent  motto  for  religious  education : 

"  Science  was  Faith  once;  Faith  were  Science 

now, 
Would  she  but  lay  her  bow  and  arrows  by 
And  arm  her  with  the  weapons  of  the  time. 
Nothing  that  keeps  thought  out  is  safe  from 

thought. 
For  there's  no  virgin-fort  but  self-respect, 
And  Truth  defensive  hath  lost  hold  on  God." 

It  was  obviously  impossible  to  condense 
within  these  lectures  the  contemplated  system- 
atic presentation  of  the  subjects  considered  in 
the  following  pages,  and  an  adequate  review 
of  the  extensive  literature  which  their  discus- 


viii  PREFACE 

sion  requires;  I  have  sought,  therefore,  in  an 
introductory  way,  to  offer  a  rapid  survey  of 
the  abundant  scientific  materials  waiting  to  be 
utilized  in  religious  thought,  and  to  outline 
simply  the  method  which,  in  a  subsequent  vol- 
ume, I  hope  to  follow  in  detail  more  thoroughly. 
For  this  purpose  it  has  seemed  best  to  leave 
the  form  of  spoken  address,  with  some  minor 
exceptions,  unaltered.  While  occasional  para- 
graphs indicate  views  to  which  I  have  been 
led,  and  some  foot-notes  refer  to  authorities  for 
students  to  consult,  a  chief  object  of  these  lec- 
tures is  to  show  what  a  rich  scientific  field  is 
ripe  for  spiritual  reaping,  and  especially  to 
stimulate  thoughtful  believers,  as  well  as  pro- 
fessional teachers  of  religion,  to  go  to  school 
to  nature  for  fresh  inspiration  and  larger,  se- 
rener  faith. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Scientific  Materials  for  Theology  ...         i 


II 

The  Method  and  Problems 32 

III 
Christ  as  Final  Fact  of  Nature    ....      68 

IV 
Scientific  Spirituality 98 


CONSTRUCTIVE 
NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

I 

SCIENTIFIC  MATERIALS  FOR  THEOLOGY 

^'ATURAL  theology,  or  the  knowledge  of 
God  to  be  derived  from  the  works  of  na- 
ture, has  commonly  been  distinguished  from  re- 
vealed theology,  or  the  knowledge  of  God  to  be 
learned  from  the  Bible.  But  the  natural  theol- 
ogy which  some  fifty  years  ago  was  taught  in 
many  of  our  colleges  as  a  necessary  part  of  a 
liberal  education,  has  not  only  disappeared  from 
the  prescribed  courses  of  study  in  the  universi- 
ties, but  it  has  ceased  generally  to  be  recog- 
nized as  such  in  the  schools  of  divinity.  The 
once  highly  esteemed  and  much  read  "Bridge- 
water  Treatises,"  with  their  reasonings  from 
nature  to  God,  now  occupy  places  of  honorable 
retirement  on  the  shelves  of  the  libraries;  Pa- 


2  CONSTRUCTIVE 

ley's  "  Evidences  "  have  been  ruled  out  of  court 
by  Darwinian  science;  and  even  Butler's  great 
''Analogy  of  Religion  to  the  Constitution  and 
Course  of  Nature"  no  longer  is  served  at  train- 
ing-tables for  theological  athletes;  though  an 
abundance  of  fresh  sociological  milk  can  hardly 
take  the  place  of  strong  meat  for  those  who  in 
understanding  would  be  men. 

The  older  natural  theology,  strongly  built  as 
it  was  from  the  scientific  materials  of  its  times, 
has  been  abandoned  as  an  antiquated  and  no 
longer  tenable  fortification.  But  some  the- 
ology of  nature,  constructed  in  accordance  with 
the  known  mechanical  principles  of  evolution, 
is  indispensable  to  a  reasonably  secure  religious 
faith.  To  fail  to  follow  the  progressive  self- 
revelation  of  nature  would  be  for  us  less  manly 
in  our  thinking,  less  reasonable  in  our  believing, 
and  less  free  and  brave  in  the  mastery  of  the 
science  of  our  day,  than  were  our  fathers  before 
us  as  they  stoutly  maintained  their  well-fortified 
dogmas  and  held  up  their  theological  banners 
to  be  displayed  because  of  truth.  Natural 
theology  may  not  now  go  forth  with  Pa  ley  to 
find  that  remarkable  watch  in  crossing  a. heath; 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  3 

but  it  may  inquire  what  the  least  particle  of 
earth  has  to  tell  of  its  atoms  or  the  energies  of 
electrons,  while  the  flowers  in  full  bloom  on  the 
heath  may  ask  us  to  behold  some  diviner  secret 
in  their  flourishing;  and  from  afar  and  above 
we  may  take  heed  of  suggestions  of  ethereal  in- 
fluences amid  which  the  worlds  that  do  appear 
were  fashioned  of  the  things  that  are  not  seen. 
It  may  well  be  true  that  if  intellectual  power 
were  given  us  to  search  through  the  infinitude 
of  outlying  space,  we  might  never  meet  face  to 
face  a  Divine  Artificer,  or  discover  the  universe 
to  be  a  vast  assembling-room  of  mechanically 
designed  elements  and  worlds;  but  possibly  in 
our  time,  if  we  have  eyes  to  see,  we  may  behold 
a  Sower  going  forth  to  sow  in  the  fields  of  in- 
finite space,  and  with  new  wonder  consider  the 
clusters  of  the  stars  how  they  grew.  Yet  not 
with  naive  childlikeness  merely  may  we  trans- 
fer the  parable  of  the  lilies  of  the  field  to  the 
constellations  of  the  heavens.  If  our  spiritual 
imagination  is  to  be  scientific;  if  religious  faith 
is  not  to  be  a  child's  fancy  thrown  lightly  out 
upon  the  mystery  of  the  world;  then  a  new  nat- 
ural theology  must  be  formed  from  the  ascer- 


4  CONSTRUCTIVE 

tained  data  of  natural  science.  Faith  is  to  be 
once  more  a  man's  achievement;  belief  a  rea- 
sonable generalization  after  laborious  research 
into  the  elements  and  processes  given  in  human 
experience.  Such  a  natural  theology  is  to  be 
based  on  foundations  of  known  facts  of  nature; 
it  is  to  be  built  with  as  little  hypothetical  the- 
ory as  possible;  its  soundness  is  to  be  examined 
after  every  new  advance  of  science;  its  inner 
truth  verified  in  any  profounder  insight  into 
life. 

This  is  indeed  a  hard  saying;  and  we  may  well 
ask,  Who  of  us  is  equal  to  it?  No  one  intellect 
is;  no  single  science  is;  nor  is  any  school  of 
philosophy,  not  even  the  most  confident  prag- 
matism, equal  to  this  task.  Nevertheless, 
many  minds  and  countless  investigators — they 
who  have  eyes  to  see  the  least  things  in  nature 
that  they  may  understand  the  great,  or  ears  to 
hear  the  whispers  of  the  Spirit  in  human  experi- 
ence that  they  may  catch  the  full  meaning  of 
life, — these  all  are  coworkers  in  discovering  the 
significance  of  the  creation;  these  shall  be  in- 
terpreters of  man's  spiritual  vision  of  the  heav- 
ens, and  his  dream  of  ideal  ends  of  being.     But 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  5 

whoever  fears  with  clear-eyed  reason,  though 
often  with  hushed  heart,  to  set  forth  on  this 
great  adventure  of  science  and  faith;  whoever 
dares  not  face  reality  in  the  spirit  of  a  man;  he 
may  become  a  scientific  automaton  or  a  theo- 
logical talking-box,  but  never  a  true  thinker  or 
a  great  believer.  Only  a  theology  fairly  won 
from  nature  and  experience  can  command  the 
modern  mind.  What  are  we  doing  to  meet 
this  demand? 

I  would  raise  this  preliminary  inquiry — one 
might  almost  say  this  challenge — to  the  min- 
isterial education  and  theology  of  our  day: 
How  are  we  facing  this  demand?  What  are 
we  doing  in  the  education  of  the  teachers  of 
religion  to  provide  a  natural  theology  adapted 
to  the  modern  mind  ? 

It  may  readily  be  answered,  the  philosophy 
of  religion  has  now  a  large  place  in  collegiate 
courses,  and  some  recognition  in  most  divinity 
schools.  But  that  title  betrays  unfitness  for 
the  specific  course  now  required.  It  is  not  first 
a  philosophy  but  a  natural  history  of  the  relig- 
ious consciousness  that  we  must  seek  in  order 
to  understand  what  personal  life  really  means. 


6  CONSTRUCTIVE 

If  we  go  first  to  nature  with  ready-made  phi- 
losophies to  be  proved,  we  shall  return  no  wiser 
than  we  went.1 

My  question  now  is:  To  what  extent  is  it 
required  in  the  education  of  students  for  the 
ministry  that  (either  in  their  college  studies  or 
in  some  seminary  courses)  they  shall  be  well- 
grounded  in  the  sciences — such  as  physics,  gen- 
eral biology,  or  experimental  and  genetic  psy- 
chology? Is  instruction  in  natural  theology 
in  schools  of  divinity  keeping  pace  with  ad- 
vances in  natural  science?  The  sciences  are 
so  progressive  in  their  experimental  methods 
that  their  laboratories  have  to  be  constantly 
renewed.  But  when  one  observes  how  meagre 
provision  is  generally  made  for  the  education 
of  theological  students  in  scientific  methods 
and  results  of  research,  he  may  wonder  whether 
it  is  due  to  poverty  of  endowments  that  a  bet- 
ter equipment  is  not  provided  to  fit  clergymen 

1 1  would  not  be  understood  as  depreciating  much  work  that  is 
done  in  courses  of  divinity  commonly  designated  as  Apologetics, 
Theism,  and  Philosophy  of  Religion;  and  I  would  acknowledge 
especially  the  thorough  work  which  the  late  Professor  Samuel 
Harris,  of  the  Yale  Divinity  School,  completed  in  his  published 
lectures  on  "The  Philosophical  Basis  of  Theism"  and  "The  Self- 
Revelation  of  God." 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  7 

to  understand  the  modern  mind  in  its  scien- 
tific passion  to  find  out  what  can  be  known,  or 
whether  it  is  due  to  the  same  reason  that  Sam- 
uel Johnson  once  gave  to  a  woman  who  asked 
him  why  he  had  defined  in  his  dictionary  the 
word  "pastern"  as  the  knee  of  a  horse:  "Ig- 
norance, Madam,"  he  replied;  "pure  igno- 
ranee.    1 

To  young  men  who  are  thinking  of  entering 
the  ministry  are  we  ready  to  give  such  advice 
as  this,  which,  from  "The  Corner  of  Harley 
Street,"  Peter  Harding,  M.D.,  wrote  to  his 
son,  who  was  considering  entering  the  medical 
profession:  "You  must  ask  yourself,  with  all 
the  earnestness  of  a  novice  at  his  altar-vigil, 

1  In  New  College,  Edinburgh,  such  instruction  is  furnished,  and 
examination  in  Professor  Simpson's  course  of  general  biology  is 
required  for  a  degree  in  divinity.  In  looking  through  the  courses 
of  some  thirty-four  Protestant  theological  seminaries  in  this  coun- 
try I  have  noticed  three  in  which  some  specific  scientific  teaching 
is  provided,  or  required  of  students  in  advanced  courses.  In  five 
others  natural  theology  is  to  some  extent  recognized  under  other 
names;  there  are  traces  of  it  as  minor  parts  of  instruction  in  other 
seminaries;  in  most  of  them,  however,  the  symptoms  of  such 
teaching  are  not  sufficiently  marked  to  enable  one  to  diagnose 
positively  its  character.  Two  features  characterize  generally, 
with  some  honorable  exceptions,  this  teaching:  the  method  is 
negative,  it  is  an  attempted  destruction  of  scientific  objections; 
and  also  the  books  referred  to  are  not  distinguished  by  familiar- 
ity with  scientific  researches  up  to  date. 


8  CONSTRUCTIVE 

'Am  I  prepared  to  know?'  .  .  .  The  eyes  of 
humanity  are  turning  slowly,  but  very  surely, 
toward  the  man  who  knows.  Are  you  prepared 
to  become  such  a  man?  .  .  .  You  will  prob- 
ably turn  upon  me  and  say,  'But  to  cultivate 
this  habit  of  forming  proper  mental  pictures, 
I  shall  have  to  become  at  least  a  chemist,  a 
physicist,  a  pathologist,  a  bacteriologist,  to  say 
nothing  of  a  philosopher;  and  how  can  a  single 
human  being,  however  industrious,  contain  as 
many  persons  as  these?'  And  of  course  he 
can  not.  Upon  no  more  than  one  branch  of  the 
tree  of  healing  will  it  be  given  to  you  to  climb 
out  a  little  farther  than  your  fellows;  but,  at 
any  rate,  you  can  keep  your  eye  upon  the  others. 
It  is  in  this  way  alone  that  you  can  become 
a  scientific  physician  in  the  best  and  broadest 
sense.  And  you  can  take  my  word  for  it  that 
it  will  never  be  worth  your  while  to  become 
any  other  sort  of  a  sawbones — an  exacting  pros- 
pect." (Pp.  24  sq.)  Shall  any  less  be  required 
of  a  physician  of  souls  ?  Shall  not  he  keep  his 
eye  on  the  other  branches  of  the  tree  of  life? 
Is  it  worth  while  to  become  any  other  sort  of 
a  theological  sawbones?    An  answer  comes  to 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  9 

us  here  from  an  oft-repeated  word  of  the  New 
England  theologian,  in  whose  memory  this  lec- 
tureship was  founded;  it  sounds  like  a  bugle- 
call:  "Follow  truth  though  it  takes  you  over 
Niagara!"  With  this  note  religion  itself  may 
make  its  appeal  to  students  of  divinity  to  be 
men  who  will  know. 

Let  me  emphasize  at  the  outset  the  first  word 
descriptive  of  the  natural  theology  that  shall 
be  adapted  to  the  need  of  the  modern  mind;  it 
must  be  constructive.  We  are  not  here  on  this 
earth  as  beings  "breathing  thoughtful  breath," 
to  spend  that  breath  chiefly  in  arguing  one  an- 
other down;  happily  the  controversial  divine,  so 
fitly  characterized  by  Doctor  Thomas  Fuller  in 
the  stormy  period  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
is  rarely  to  be  met  with  now  in  good  Chris- 
tian society.  Truth  calls  us  to  better  service 
than  to  manufacture  proofs  against  manufac- 
tured objections;  it  bids  us  seek  until  we  find 
it.  We  are  here  to  use  our  reason  to  the  ut- 
most, to  learn  what  may  be  known  of  realities 
— of  what  is  right  and  true,  and  well  worth 
living  for  in  our  brief  hour  in  the  midst  of  this 
daily  wonder  and  partial  revelation  and  vaster 


io  CONSTRUCTIVE 

significance  of  the  universe.  The  first  task, 
therefore,  of  natural  theology  is  to  discern  what 
indications,  if  any,  are  given  in  the  natural 
sciences  for  the  reasonable  interpretation  of 
the  world  and  ourselves  in  it.  Where,  then, 
are  we  to  look  for  the  materials  for  such  con- 
structive thought? 

The  answer  in  general  is  near  at  hand:  all 
ascertained  facts  of  science  are  material  for  nat- 
ural theology.  From  far  and  near,  from  the 
least  to  the  greatest,  everything  that  research 
may  discover,  or  experience  make  its  own,  is 
to  be  welcomed  as  having  worth  and  meaning 
for  the  interpretation  of  the  world.  To  nat- 
ural theology,  with  its  outspread  sheet,  nothing 
can  be  common  or  unclean. 

There  is  nothing  merely  so  mechanical  in 
physics  that  it  can  be  understood  only  as  a 
problem  of  strains  and  stresses;  nothing  so 
purely  quantitative  that  it  can  be  left  entirely 
to  the  mathematicians;  nothing  so  simply 
chemical  that  it  can  remain  wholly  in  the  re- 
torts of  the  laboratories;  in  short,  there  is  not 
a  single  thing  in  the  universe  that  exists  for 
itself  alone;    in  their  correlations,  taken  alto- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  u 

gether,  existing  things  constitute  the  reality 
that  is  given  us  for  our  rational  interpretation. 
To  say  this  is  to  assert  the  right  of  natural 
theology  as  a  pupil  in  the  laboratories  of  the 
university;  at  the  same  time  it  is  to  acknowl- 
edge its  duty  to  enter  there  as  a  learner  that 
it  may  become  a  master  among  the  teachers 
of  the  meanings  of  life.  This  is  by  no  means 
to  confuse  science  by  introducing  metaphysics, 
but  it  is  to  bid  the  philosophy  of  religion  first 
to  go  to  school  to  the  natural  in  order  that  it 
may  become  fit  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
the  spiritual.  This  is  likewise  to  recognize  in 
nature  without  us  the  same  double  aspect  that 
is  presented  in  personal  consciousness — the  too 
often  overlooked  truth  that  all  material  fact 
presents  to  us  a  transcendental  problem;  every- 
thing that  is  given  in  nature  is  given  as  an  in- 
terrogation to  the  reason  that  is  in  man.  Thus, 
to  take  a  single  example,  in  the  Cavendish  lab- 
oratory, radium  rays  were  passed  through  a 
supersaturated  tube  which  had  been  ingen- 
iously contrived  for  the  desired  experiment 
(beta  as  well  as  alpha  rays  being  used).  As  a 
ray  passes,  it  causes  the  atoms  through  which 


12  CONSTRUCTIVE 

it  goes  to  break  into  corpuscles,  called  ions,  and 
on  these,  at  a  sudden  expansion  of  the  gas  in 
the  tube,  minute  drops  of  moisture  are  con- 
densed, so  that  the  radium  particle  leaves  after 
it  to  mark  its  way  a  vaporous  trail.  By  a 
simultaneous  electric  flash  that  line  of  vapori- 
zation was  photographed,  so  that  one  may 
see  the  very  path  along  which  an  infinitesimal 
particle  of  a  radium  ray  took  its  flight  through 
the  tube.  On  these  photographs  a  curve  at 
the  end  of  some  of  these  vaporous  lines  shows 
where  a  corpuscle  had  dropped  its  electric 
charge,  slowed  up,  and  become  inert.1  Ocular 
demonstration  has  thus  been  given  of  things 
invisible,  which  theoretical  views  of  the  con- 
stitution of  the  atom  had  rendered  probable; 
what  no  eye  has  seen  or  can  see  has  been 
proved  to  be  existent;  these  infinitesimal  par- 
ticles of  the  radium  rays  have  become  evident 
and  measurable  in  their  streaming  through  the 
atmosphere  of  that  glass  tube,  as  is  the  passage 
of  a  comet  with  its  train  of  light  across  the 
sky.     We  know  now  that  the  electrons  are — 

1  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society,  A.  vol.  87,   191 2,  p.  277, 
C.  T.  R.  Wilson. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  13 

but  what  are  they?  What  does  all  this,  of 
which  I  am  speaking,  taken  as  a  whole,  mean 
— these  dissociated  atoms,  these  unknown  yet 
demonstrable  electrons,  these  motions,  colli- 
sions, separations,  recombinations,  and  those 
other  rays  still  more  ethereal  in  that  same  glass 
tube  in  the  Cavendish  laboratory;  and,  fur- 
thermore, the  mind  devising,  arranging  that 
tube  with  its  unseen  contents,  and  by  a  simul- 
taneous electric  flash  causing  it  to  reveal  its 
secret;  the  trained  intelligence  that  found 
there  the  very  substance  of  the  things  which 
it  believed  must  be  there,  or  else  it  could  not 
understand  the  things  that  are  seen?  What, 
as  a  connected  whole,  do  all  these  things  to- 
gether signify?  What  does  it  mean — this  veri- 
fication of  a  reasonable  expectation  which  na- 
ture gives  to  the  reason  watching  in  man? 
Physical  science  hands  over  to  natural  theology 
this  vacuum  tube  with  its  new  revelation  of 
invisible  energy,  that  it  may  be  comprehended 
in  the  omnipresent  mystery  of  divinity  still  to 
be  revealed.  But  if  our  theology  is  not  faith- 
ful in  this  molecule  of  radium,  which  is  very 
little,  how  shall  it  be  faithful  also  in  that  which 


i4  CONSTRUCTIVE 

is  much?  If  in  our  schools  of  divinity  we  are 
not  faithful  in  this  material  knowledge,  who 
shall  commit  to  our  trust  the  true  riches? 

Let  me  mention  another  illustrative  instance. 
I  look  through  a  microscope  at  a  section  of  the 
egg  of  a  humble  worm,  Ascaris.  I  have  the 
wonder  of  the  world  of  life  there  beneath  my 
eye  on  that  glass  slide.  What  does  that  dot 
of  matter  under  the  microscope  mean?  What 
do  these  things  mean  ? — its  constitution,  its  en- 
ergy as  living  matter,  its  subtly  co-ordinated 
and  definitely  determined  processes  of  division, 
multiplication,  development  in  one  specific  di- 
rection selected  from  numberless  divergent  ways 
that  other  cells  are  taking?  By  what  powers 
of  nature  has  it  been  predetermined,  by  what 
factors  was  it  held  true  to  its  single  end,  to  be 
a  worm  Ascaris? 

Biology  has  still  far  more  to  learn  of  its 
chemistry,  to  trace  more  clearly  its  structural 
lines,  to  peer,  if  it  may,  more  deeply  into  its 
elemental  substance.  In  such  patient  research 
of  the  biologist  it  is  no  business  of  the  meta- 
physician to  interfere  with  his  Absolute,  or  for 
the  theologian  to  forestall  inquiry  with  his  final 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  15 

causes;  nor  for  that  matter  should  evolutionary 
philosophy  itself  interfere  with  its  own  science. 
Nevertheless,  the  biologist  is  a  man  for  all 
that;  and  when  he  looks  up  from  his  task, 
as  you  and  I  and  all  thoughtful  people  do, 
and  thinks  over  and  all  about  any  observed 
fact;  then  he  becomes  a  metaphysician,  a  phi- 
losopher, a  theologian,  whether  he  will  or  no; 
and  the  real  question,  as  we  think  over  things, 
and  of  ourselves  as  included  among  them,  is 
only  the  question  whether  we  shall  be  good  or 
bad  metaphysicians.  Philosophers,  theologians 
of  some  kind,  we  all  of  us  at  times  have  to 
become,  we  all  are  made  to  be  by  virtue  of  the 
inner  dynamic  of  our  personal  nature;  as  veri- 
tably as  that  egg  has  to  become  a  worm  of  the 
species  Ascaris.  For  us,  that  cell,  as  I  am 
speaking  to  you  of  it,  is  not  merely  a  dot  of 
matter  that  happened  to  be  on  that  glass  slide; 
under  a  human  eye  it  became  a  cell  differenti- 
ated from  myriads  innumerable  of  similar  cells; 
it  became  a  selected  cell,  holding  a  definite  po- 
sition and  serving  now  a  use  not  predestined 
by  its  natural  determinants.  It  acted  upon  the 
retina  of  an  eye  at  the  other  end  of  the  micro- 


1 6  CONSTRUCTIVE 

scope,  and  its  impression  stimulated  in  turn  the 
cortical  areas  of  that  other,  that  intelligent 
optical  instrument  which  a  man  is  supposed  to 
carry  about  with  him  in  his  head.  Now,  this 
whole  complex  situation,  I  am  saying, — a  par- 
ticle of  a  worm's  egg,  a  microscope,  itself  made 
for  a  purpose,  an  intricate  physiological  appara- 
tus, a  psychical  process,  itself  mixed  with  mem- 
ory images  and  held  to  a  purposive  will;  and 
beyond  all  this,  the  idea  which  just  at  this  mo- 
ment I  am  reflecting  upon  your  consciousness, 
to  find,  maybe,  a  lodging-place  among  your 
ideas:  these  things,  not  to  mention  other  par- 
ticulars, taken  all  together,  constitute  a  problem 
of  meaning,  the  problem  which  no  science  by 
itself  alone  may  presume  to  solve.  After  the 
sciences  have  all  had  their  say,  it  is  the  high 
calling  of  natural  theology  to  take  up  their 
parable;  what  interpretation  of  it  is  to  be 
found  by  the  spiritual  man,  of  whom  it  was 
said,  he  "judgeth  all  things,  and  he  himself  is 
judged  of  no  man"? 

For  the  sake  of  an  example  I  have  thus  in- 
troduced to  you  this  acquaintance  of  mine  from 
the  lowly  walks  of  life,  the  humble  worm  As- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  17 

carts — its  full  name  is  Ascaris  megalocephala;  it 
may  have  something  to  tell  us  in  our  studies 
of  divinity.  For  if  one  could  discern  the  last 
substantiality,  the  innermost  secret  of  the  life 
taking  specific  form  in  that  microscopic  cell, 
he  might  come  nearer  finding  what  Tennyson 
once  said  all  his  life  long  he  had  been  seeking— 
a  new  vision  of  God. 

'Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 
I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand. 
Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 

From  the  wealth  of  material  that  the  sciences 
are  gathering  for  a  new  construction  of  natural 
theology  another  example  may  be  fittingly  no- 
ticed in  this  lectureship,  for  Doctor  Nathaniel 
W.  Taylor,  had  he  known  it,  might  have  wel- 
comed it  in  his  notable  effort  to  prove  that 
this  world,  in  the  place  where  it  is,  is  the  best 
possible  world.  I  refer  to  a  biological  speculation 
that  may  throw  a  gleam  at  least  of  light  into 
the  dark  mystery  of  the  origin  of  evil  and 
death.  That  is  physically  a  question  of  nat- 
ural science  before  it  becomes  a  problem  of 


1 8  CONSTRUCTIVE 

religious  philosophy.  It  is,  accordingly,  very 
much  to  the  theological  point  to  inquire  whether 
we  know  anything  or  not  concerning  the  en- 
trance of  death  into  life.  Ever  the  positive  of 
human  love  is  shadowed  by  the  mystery  of 
death.  But  did  death  first  come  to  deny  life? 
Biology  renders  a  tentative  answer:  death, 
likewise,  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil  life. 
Inquire  of  nature  if  this,  indeed,  be  so.  I  am 
shown  in  the  biological  laboratory  a  Parame- 
cium, one  of  the  unicellular  protozoa.  Each 
Paramecium,  it  should  be  explained,  multiplies 
by  division  into  two,  the  whole  body  of  the 
parent  cell  surviving  in  the  daughter  cells. 
How  long  can  that  process  continue  without 
death  ?  Some  years  ago  Weissman  held  in  sup- 
port of  his  theory  of  heredity  that  among  the 
protozoa  there  is  no  natural  necessity  of  death. 
A  French  investigator,  Maupas,  succeeded  in 
carrying  on  the  succession  for  over  six  hun- 
dred generations,  but  then  senescence  occurred 
and  life  gave  up  its  task.  Professor  Woodruff", 
here  at  Yale,  has  succeeded  in  carrying  on  the 
line  of  descent  almost  indefinitely  unbroken  by 
death;  it  was  the  thirty-six  hundredth  pareme- 
cium,  when  I  inquired  the  other  day  after  its 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  19 

health.  The  professor,  of  course,  takes  one  of 
the  two  daughter  cells  after  each  division  to 
continue  the  line  of  descent,  himself  putting 
the  other  to  an  unnatural  end;  if  he  did  not, 
assuming  sufficient  nutriment  could  be  pro- 
vided, the  mass  of  matter  heaped  up  by  the 
rapid  multiplication  of  these  paramecia  in  a 
month  would  be  approximately  equal  to  the 
mass  of  the  earth,  and  within  the  five  or  six 
years  since  he  began  his  experimentation,  it 
would  have  mounted  up  toward  the  mass  of  the 
known  universe. 

On  the  next  higher  stage  of  life — that  of  the 
metazoa,  organisms  of  two  or  more  cells — death 
has  entered,  and  is  found  with  other  evolution- 
ary factors  at  its  work.  What  does  it  work  for  ? 
The  biological  answer  is  not  in  all  respects  ex- 
plicit, but  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  one  of  the 
factors  of  variation,  and  that  it  works  for  the 
further  differentiation  and  enrichment  of  life. 
Some  biologists  find  the  beginnings  of  natural 
death  coincident  with  the  rudiments  of  sex. 
Strictly  speaking,  it  may  be  said  that  death 
appears  as  an  incidental  condition  in  the  ad- 
vancement of  life.     Subsequently  and  obviously 


20  CONSTRUCTIVE 

throughout  evolution  death  balances  the  book 
of  account  between  life's  ratio  of  fertility  and 
its  means  of  living.  We  owe  our  human  birth 
to  death.  We  are  the  living  children  of  a  world 
that  has  died  for  us.  If,  then,  we  may  win  from 
nature  any  assurance  that  death  itself  has  its 
place  as  a  servant  in  the  work  of  life,  that  it  has 
its  reason  for  being  here  on  a  principle  of  utility, 
we  may  then  conceive  that  death  may  also  be 
discharged  from  service  when  no  longer  use- 
ful; that  death  may  be  atrophied  in  the  high- 
est embodiment  of  spiritual  personality;  in 
that  consummate  realm  of  life  made  perfect, 
where  they  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in 
marriage,  its  work  done,  its  use  ended,  death 
shall  be  no  more — even  as  already  in  the  Christ- 
consciousness  of  life  we  are  passed  from  death 
into  the  life  eternal. 

I  would  throw  this  out,  however,  simply  as 
illustrating  the  many  suggestions  which  biolog- 
ical studies  bring  to  minds  thoughtful  of  the 
outlying  mystery  of  human  life  and  the  deep 
things  of  God.1 

1  The  author  discussed  the  natural  utility  of  death  in  a  book 
published  several  years  ago,  entitled,  "The  Place  of  Death  in 
Evolution."     More  recent  biological  science  does  not  alter  ma- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  21 

With  these  brief  indications  of  the  wealth  of 
material  to  be  worked  over  by  a  thorough  nat- 
ural theology,  let  us  fix  clearly  in  mind  its  spe- 
cific aim.  Its  work  is  to  search  for  the  mean- 
ings of  things.  It  is  differentiated  from  other 
inquiries  which  may  have  this  end,  inasmuch 
as  it  starts  from  the  nature  side.  Its  way  of 
approach  to  its  conclusions  is  through  nature. 

Natural  science  as  such  has  only  indirectly, 
while  natural  theology  has  directly,  to  do  with 
the  problem  of  meanings  or  values.  The  phys- 
icist reaches  the  limit  of  his  experiments  when 
he  discovers  how  things  are  so  constituted  that 
they  must  act  and  react  as  they  do.  Natural 
science  is  concerned  with  the  relations  of  phe- 
nomena; it  need  not  be  diverted  from  its  task 
to  chase  through  the  universe  after  Kant's 
"thing  in  itself. "  The  scientist  has  no  scientific 
right  to  have  any  personal  interest  in  things; 
he  must  make  himself  as  impersonal  as  a  man 
can  be  in  his  laboratory;  the  diagnosis  of  a 
physician  has  nothing  to  do  with  his  personal 

terially  the  basis  for  the  reasoning  there  pursued.  It  has  in  Pro- 
fessor Woodruffs  successful  experiment  confirmed  rather  Weiss- 
man's  view  that  in  the  constitution  of  protoplasm  there  is 
inherently  no  natural  necessity  of  death. 


22  CONSTRUCTIVE 

concern  for  his  patient,  and  he  might  be  misled 
if  it  did.  So  Mr.  C.  Lloyd  Morgan  in  his  latest 
book  on  "Instinct  and  Experience"  confines 
his  inquiry  strictly  to  the  constitution  of  ani- 
mal nature  and  the  behavior  of  his  favorite 
moor-hen,  and  he  pulls  himself  up  whenever  he 
finds  himself  facing  the  question  of  the  "source" 
of  any  organic  law  or  habit.  It  is  noticeable, 
however,  that  every  few  pages  he  has  to  hold 
himself  back  from  looking  over  his  physical 
fences,  and  that  he  can  not  help  casting  an  oc- 
casional side  glance  into  Bergsonian  philosophy 
as  he  goes  along  his  own  way.  But  the  saying, 
"Nature  for  the  nature  searchers,"  is  an  excel- 
lent maxim  for  the  laboratories.  As  Mr.  Mor- 
gan has  to  begin  somewhere,  he  strikes  into  the 
way  of  life  at  that  precise  distance  from  the 
source  where  the  chick  of  his  moor-hen  makes 
the  first  peck  at  the  shell,  and  from  that  point 
he  traces  the  development  of  instinct  proper 
through  its  modifications  by  experience  and 
the  growth  of  animal  intelligence;  he  concludes 
his  valuable  observations  with  the  remark  that 
it  is  for  the  interest  of  science  and  metaphysics 
alike  that  they  should  be  kept  apart. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  23 

And  so,  indeed,  it  is  while  we  are  specializing, 
and  so  far  we  can  specialize  nature  itself.  But 
that  will  not  be  long,  nor  does  it  go  far.  Our 
specialties  define  our  divisions  of  labor;  they 
mark  the  metes  and  bounds  of  the  fields  given 
us  to  cultivate,  but  they  are  our  fences  only 
drawn  over  the  common  earth,  and  above 
them  all  we  look  up  into  the  same  sky.  In- 
deed, just  this  is  one  of  the  great  lessons  that 
the  several  sciences  are  bringing  home  to  us, 
as  men  have  never  felt  it  so  profoundly  before, 
that  nature  is  one  nature,  its  history  one  his- 
tory, its  law  one  law,  and  its  God  one  omni- 
present Reality. 

It  is  a  splendid  gift  of  modern  science  to 
modern  thought  that  it  demonstrates  this  unity 
of  nature  and  our  personal  oneness  with  all  this 
"the  mighty  world  of  sound  and  sense,"  the  feel- 
ing of  which  lies  deeply  in  the  heart  of  modern 
poetry  of  nature.  It  is  a  twofold  lesson  that 
we  are  taught — the  discontinuities  and  yet  the 
continuities  of  things.  Outward  objects  are 
concrete,  having  distinguishable  forms  and  spe- 
cific characters;  yet  at  the  same  time  they 
are  correlated  and  in  energies  continuous.     Our 


24  CONSTRUCTIVE 

conceptions  of  things  may  be  analytically  de- 
termined, like  the  lines  of  longitude  or  latitude 
which  the  mariner  passes,  but  which  are  not 
drawn  across  the  waves  of  the  sea.  There  are 
specific  forms  in  evolution,  but  our  classifica- 
tions cut  not  deeply  into  the  substance  of  out- 
ward reality.  Common  sense  sees  at  a  glance 
the  difference  between  the  grass  and  the  cattle 
browsing  in  the  field,  while  the  scientific  eye 
can  hardly  discern  where  the  one  kingdom 
begins  and  the  other  ends.  Our  perceptions 
are  broken  images,  where  nature  knows  no 
breaks.  Events  succeed  one  another,  yet  as 
waves  of  the  one  underlying  ocean.  The 
branch  of  an  elm  is  etched  to  our  eye  against 
a  clear  wintry  sky;  but  if  it  were  drawn  across 
the  retina  of  a  more  microscopic  eye,  the  lines 
would  be  a  pattern  of  finer  tracery  where  the 
twigs  of  the  topmost  branches  end  and  the 
sky  begins.  Still  more  subtly  discerned  with 
ultramicroscopic  definition  that  pattern  seen 
by  us  against  the  sky  would  resolve  into  tracery 
of  finest  motions;  the  molecules  and  electrons 
having  distinctive  signs,  yet  interchanging,  re- 
bounding, no  longer  that  sharp  definition  of 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  25 

branches,  but  a  waving  line  of  radiances,  as  a 
quivering  edge  of  flame — each  beginning  and 
ending  undefinable  as  the  twinkling  of  the  star 
in  the  sky  above.  Would  we  seek  still  to  mark 
the  very  point,  to  hold  fast  the  very  motion 
where  the  topmost  twig  is  twig  and  the  sky  is 
sky,  we  should  need  intelligence  divine  enough 
to  trace  these  elemental  appearances  back  to 
their  first  distinctness  as  they  came  forth  ethereal 
whirls  of  matter;  members  are  these  all  of  one 
another,  both  great  and  small,  yet  differing  in 
their  glory.  Has  not  the  keen-minded  Lotze 
taught  us  that  forces  do  not  act  at  a  distance, 
that  one  thing  is  in  another  where  it  begins 
or  ends?  and  Goethe  said:  "Nature  is  neither 
kernel  nor  shell;  she  is  everything  at  once." 
So,  as  scientifically  known,  and  as  poetically 
felt,  the  bough  is  one  with  the  sky,  and  the 
sky  is  one  with  the  bough,  though  neither  is 
the  other.  Hence,  likewise,  for  this  is  the 
point  to  which  I  would  return,  these  sharply 
separated  specialties  of  ours,  our  sciences,  our 
electives,  our  humanities  and  theologies  are 
useful  and  necessary  for  our  analysis  and  work; 
they  are  our  fixation  of  that  which  is  given  in 


26  CONSTRUCTIVE 

the  flow  of  experience,  but  they  are  not  absolute 
differentiations;  they  do  not  reach  down  to  the 
vitalities  of  our  personal  being.  Consequently, 
we  do  not  know  ourselves  if  we  are  to  ourselves 
only  scientists  or  philosophers,  thinkers  or 
lovers,  or  any  of  our  specialized  kinds  of  selves; 
we  can  know  ourselves  deeply  and  all-round 
only  as  we  breathe  and  feel  and  think  and 
love  in  unison  with  all  that  is  and  lives  and 
loves.  The  analysis  is  the  task  of  science;  the 
synopsis  is  the  gift  of  life.  Nor  are  such  ob- 
servations uncalled  for  in  view  of  the  arbitrary 
and  superficial  separations  which  are  some- 
times assumed  to  exist  between  physics  and 
metaphysics,  between  the  scientific  temper  and 
a  religious  trust,  as  though  the  two,  science 
and  religion,  like  the  Samaritans  with  their 
law  only,  and  the  Jews  with  the  prophets  also, 
have  no  dealings  with  each  other.  I  have  been 
emphasizing  the  fact,  therefore,  that  in  actual 
living  and  thinking  they  can  not  help  having 
dealings  with  one  another.  To  set  up  either 
a  mechanistic  or  a  spiritual  interpretation  of 
ourselves  on  the  single  base  of  either  were  to 
raise  a  broken  shaft  and  to  leave  no  possibil- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  27 

ity  of  the  completing  arch.  We,  indeed,  with 
our  present  knowledge  are  not  able  to  appre- 
hend the  simplification  of  the  dualism  of  mat- 
ter and  mind  in  their  higher  unity,  but  even 
in  our  partial  knowledge  we  may  trace  some 
converging  lines  between  the  natural  and  the 
spiritual,  and  follow  these  structural  lines  up  far 
enough  to  render  reasonable  our  faith  that  there 
is  beyond  our  sight  some  overarching   unity. 

Our  work,  then,  in  natural  theology  as  thus 
far  set  forth,  alike  as  learners  and  as  interpret- 
ers of  meanings,  is  at  once  humble  and  ex- 
alted; it  warns  us  against  the  presumption 
either  of  a  final  science  or  a  dogmatic  philos- 
ophy; it  bids  us  cultivate  "the  modesty  of 
true  science"  and  the  aspiration  of  a  spiritual 
faith.  It  calls  us  once  again  in  this  genera- 
tion to  a  positive  work  of  construction,  inas- 
much as  natural  theology,  though  but  as  a 
child  among  these  building  blocks  of  the  crea- 
tion, can  nevertheless  put  together  some  facts 
according  to  some  meaning;  it  may  match 
lines  and  letters  to  some  intelligible  purpose; 
and  as  more  and  more  the  parts  are  fitly  joined 
together,  and  word  adds  meaning  to  word,  the 


28  CONSTRUCTIVE 

belief  grows  that  the  whole  has  significance 
well  worth  our  knowing — perhaps,  when  we  shall 
see  it  as  a  whole,  a  simpler,  more  human,  yet 
diviner  meaning  than  we  had  thought. 

Let  me  add  a  few  words  concerning  the  value 
of  such  scientific  studies  in  natural  theology  to 
the  preacher.  The  exigencies  of  his  calling  ex- 
pose him  weekly  to  the  intellectual  peril  of  vague 
thinking  and  unreal  expression.  In  his  sym- 
pathies also  at  all  times  his  mind  must  be  quick 
to  catch  the  moods  of  men  as  a  lake  does  the 
shadows  of  the  passing  clouds.  He  must  de- 
sire to  imitate  the  Master  in  feeling  as  his  own 
the  feeling  of  every  home  of  sorrow.  He  needs, 
then,  more  than  others  to  maintain  a  rigorous 
discipline  of  clear,  consecutive  thinking,  held 
closely  to  the  facts.  He  especially  must  be  on 
his  guard  against  that  common  human  infirmity, 
namely,  the  liability,  in  thinking,  of  a  sudden 
gaseous  expansion  of  truth  at  a  high  tempera- 
ture of  feeling.  As  a  social  leader  he  will  need 
the  mental  habit  of  seeing  a  wrong  felt,  or  a 
reform  proposed,  in  its  large  relations,  seeing 
it  clearly  and  seeing  it  whole.  And  as  a  relig- 
ious  teacher   of   ideal    and    spiritual    realities, 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  29 

he  must  keep  firm  footing  on  the  solid  ground 
of  nature,  while  he  walks  with  "looks  com- 
mercing with  the  skies."  Allow  me  to  com- 
mend to  your  use  as  a  most  salutary  mental 
discipline  in  exact  thinking  the  study  and  the 
effort  to  construct  for  yourselves  a  scientific 
natural  theology.  Schopenhauer  speaks  of  it 
as  "a  trick  often  used  by  him  to  advantage,  sud- 
denly, when  a  thought  especially  inspired  him, 
to  turn  over  it  the  ice-cold  water  of  critical 
reflection  in  order  to  see  whether  it  would  re- 
tain its  nature  and  power."  I  know  of  no  bet- 
ter way  of  so  doing  than  to  listen  to  some  scien- 
tific lectures;  of  no  more  invigorating  cold 
bath  in  its  reaction  for  our  idealism,  for  such 
as  are  strong  enough  to  bear  it,  than  to  take 
a  header,  for  instance,  into  Loeb's  mechanistic 
conception  of  the  contents  of  the  inner  life, 
and  to  come  out  again  into  the  light  of  com- 
mon sense. 

But  beyond  this  disciplinary  value,  which  is 
needed,  will  be  the  direct  spiritual  reassurance 
and  ever  fresh  exhilaration  which  the  preacher 
of  the  word  of  life  may  derive  from  the  return 
to  nature. 


30  CONSTRUCTIVE 

For   him   in   the   increasing   illumination   of 
scientific    knowledge    to   become    able    to    lay 
hold  of  great  creative  principles  that  run  on 
and    up   from   the   first   pulsations   of  cosmic 
ether  to  the   garden,   the    man  of  the   earth 
earthy,  the  second  man  of  the  spiritual  spiri- 
tual, even  the  Lord  from  heaven, — oh!  this  is 
to  receive  from  nature  herself  a  new  baptism 
of  power;  and  still  further  to  gain  some  per- 
ception that  these  same  constitutive  natural 
principles  reach  on  and  on  toward  worlds  un- 
realized as  yet;    to  discover  throughout  these 
preparatory   eras   of  time   the   real   analogies, 
and  consequently  true  prophecies  of  the  eter- 
nal,  and,   knowing  ourselves   in   our  personal 
transcendence  as  having  part  and  share  in  all 
that  is  going  on  in  God's  great  universe,  to 
wait  thus  in  the  expectation  of  the  whole  crea- 
tion for  the  revelation  of  the  sons  of  God — 
this,  this,  shall  be  for  us  in  very  truth  to  lay 
hold  of  the  life  that  is  life  indeed.     And  then, 
with  such  humble  simplicity  as  grace  shall  be 
given  us  to  attain  in  our  preaching,  sometimes 
it   may  be   permitted   us  to  succeed   in   doing 
what  Jesus  himself  was  always  doing,  giving 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  31 

to  the  least  and  lowliest  his  own  best  and  high- 
est truth  of  God;  even  as  he  did  those  two 
great  things  at  once  in  that  hour  when  he  gave 
to  the  woman  at  Jacob's  Well  his  own  inner 
truth,  so  high  above  her  thought  before,  that 
God  is  spirit,  while,  at  the  same  time,  he  told 
her  all  the  things  that  ever  she  had  done. 


II 

THE  METHOD  AND  PROBLEMS 

TN  the  preceding  lecture  it  was  urged  that 
we  should  seek  to  understand  anew  what  the 
Spirit  hath  to  say  to  the  churches  in  the  pro- 
gressive revealings  of  nature.  The  spoils  of 
the  natural  sciences  wait  to  be  utilized  by  a 
new  natural  theology.  In  view  of  the  advances 
of  Neo-Darwinism  and  the  fresh  contributions 
of  science  to  our  knowledge  of  evolution,  the 
Apologetics,  so  called,  of  faith  need  to  be  re- 
written up  to  date.  Moreover,  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  systematic  theology,  which  is  desirable, 
requires  a  broad  and  deeply  laid  foundation  in 
natural  theology.  It  is  inadvisable  to  erect 
a  theological  sky-scraper  on  foundations  that 
are  not  laid  firm  in  nature.  Preachers  who 
would  minister  to  the  mind  of  this  generation 
need  the  ever  fresh  inspiration  of  what  one  of 

the  ancients  called  "the  Spirit  of  Education." 

32 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  33 

That  there  may  be  in  our  time  a  rejuvenes- 
cence of  spiritual  faith,  religion  may  well  go 
out-of-doors,  and  with  all  the  elemental  forces 
around  and  above  it  prophesy  and  say  of  its 
systems  of  dogmatics,  "Lo,  they  are  very  dry. 
Come  from  the  four  winds,  O  Breath,  and 
breathe  upon  these  slain  systems  of  dogmatics, 
that  they  may  live." 

I  proceed  next  to  indicate  the  method  and 
the  range  of  the  problems  which  natural  theol- 
ogy has  to  pursue. 

We  exist  somewhere  midway  in  the  course 
of  nature,  our  beginnings  hidden  in  the  depths 
of  the  measureless  past  ages  before  ever  our 
members  were  fashioned,  and  the  end  of  us 
beyond  our  earth-time  as  yet  all  unrevealed. 
Our  knowledge — a  little  span  and  narrow  circle 
of  it — lies  in  the  midst  of  the  flood  of  the  years. 
But,  be  it  small  or  great,  so  far  as  it  goes  it  has 
firm  footing  on  fact,  and  it  is  real  knowledge. 
It  is  our  experience  of  what  is;  and  if  we  are 
true  to  that,  as  it  is  here  and  now,  we  may 
trust  the  universe  ultimately  not  to  disown  us; 
neither  from  the  beginning  nor  the  end  shall 
come  denial  of  what  is  now  given  in  our  per- 


34  CONSTRUCTIVE 

sonal  being,  and  realized  in  the  personal  life 
as  having  immortal  worth. 

"Nature  never  did  betray 
The  heart  that  loved  her." 

In  determining,  then,  the  method  of  construc- 
tive natural  theology  we  have  first  of  all  to  decide 
the  point  from  which  our  inquiry  shall  start, 
near  which  end  of  our  knowledge  in  the  midst 
of  things  we  shall  begin.  For  no  difference 
between  older  and  more  recent  methods  of 
philosophic  thinking  is  more  marked  than  just 
this — the  opposite  points  of  their  departure. 
The  philosophy  of  nature  of  the  earlier  nine- 
teenth century  started  from  the  transcenden- 
tal view  of  nature,  as  Schelling  would  discover 
the  ideal  content  that  exists  in  things,  or  as 
Fichte's  subjective  philosophy  regarded  na- 
ture from  the  point  of  view  of  the  beholder, 
making  nature  a  looking-glass  of  himself.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  more  modern  natural  phi- 
losophy, since  La  Place,  starts  from  the  me- 
chanical point  of  view  and  seeks  to  determine 
mathematically  the  working  principles  of  na- 
ture.    Simultaneously  with  these  different  phil- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  35 

osophical  views,  there  grew  up  the  modern  nat- 
uralistic school  of  poetry.1  These  two  voices, 
the  naturalist's  and  the  poet's,  are  heard  in 
Goethe;  but  of  all  poets  Wordsworth,  of  whom 
it  is  said  that  he  never  made  a  mistake  in  his 
descriptions  of  natural  objects,  has  been  the  in- 
terpreter of  the  interaction  of  man  and  nature, 
as  he  himself  has  called  it: 

"An  ennobling  interchange 
Of  action  from  without  and  from  within, 
The  excellence,  pure  function  and  best  power 
Both  of  the  object  seen  and  eye  that  sees." 

The  task  for  natural  theology  to  accomplish 
might  in  one  aspect  be  described  in  these  words 
of  Wordsworth  concerning  the  poet's  power: 
"He  considers  man  and  nature  as  essentially 
adapted  to  each  other,  and  the  mind  of  man 
as  naturally  the  mirror  of  the  fairest  and  most 
interesting  qualities  of  nature.  .  .  .  Poetry  is  the 
breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge;  it  is 
the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in  the  coun- 
tenance of  all  science."2     This  is  what  the  new 

*See   Merz,    "Hist,   of    European    Thought,"   vol.   Ill,   pp. 
546  sq. 

2 Preface  to  second  edition  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads," 


36  CONSTRUCTIVE 

natural  theology  shall  do:  interpret  the  spiri- 
tual expression  which  is  on  the  very  countenance 
of  true  science. 

Where,  then,  did  I  just  ask,  shall  we  start 
in  search  of  the  ultimate  meanings  of  ourselves 
and  our  world?  I  answer,  we  are  to  begin 
neither  with  Schelling's  philosophy  nor  with 
Wordsworth's  poetry  of  nature.  Neither  shall 
we  go  back  to  Kant  and  throw  the  metaphysi- 
cian's net  of  categories  over  all  things,  to  find 
that  the  "thing  in  itself"  always  slips  through 
its  meshes.  We  must  make  at  the  start  the 
candid  admission  that  the  mechanists  have 
fought  a  winning  battle  with  the  vitalists; 
they  have  traced  the  mechanical  connections 
throughout  nature  even  into  the  complicated 
operations  of  their  own  brains.  This  exten- 
sion of  the  mechanistic  conception  on  the  sci- 
entific side  compels  us,  if  we  would  save  our 
theological  souls,  to  go  down  ourselves  with 
them  to  first  principles  and  to  reconstruct  our 
psychology  and  our  religious  philosophy  anew 
from  the  bottom  up.  Now,  when  the  modern 
mind  calls  again  the  leaders  to  lead  in  Israel, 
if  the  schools  of  divinity  should  abide  in  their 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  37 

cozy  traditions  and  their  comfortable  philos- 
ophies, like  Reuben  they  would  deserve  the 
scorn  of  Deborah,  that  valiant  mother  in  Israel: 
"Why  satest  thou  among  the  sheepfolds  to 
hear  the  pipings  for  the  flocks  ?"  Upon  their 
honor  as  teachers  of  men  who  would  know,  the- 
ological leaders  are  called  forth  to  search  for 
the  beginnings  of  their  faiths  as  far  back  into 
the  realities  of  nature  as  any  knowledge  can 
possibly  go.  Here,  at  Yale,  a  school  of  religion 
would  have  no  right  or  reason  to  stand  in  the 
midst  of  a  university,  facing  its  laboratories, 
unless  it  could  write  over  its  portals  the  in- 
scription: "All  nature-searchers  welcome  here." 
Yes,  but  you  may  say,  the  line  of  knowledge, 
as  you  have  called  it,  on  the  scientific  side  is  a 
short  one;  are  we  to  be  tethered  in  our  belief 
to  what  the  scientists  positively  know?  The 
answer  is  forthcoming:  speculative  thought, 
pushing  out  from  either  end  of  the  known  line, 
the  scientific  or  the  religious,  the  subphysical 
or  the  metaphysical  end,  is  as  necessary  to  a 
man  of  full-grown  intelligence  as  one  of  those 
simple  questions  which  we  know  not  how  to 
answer  is  necessary  to  a  little  child.     But  spec- 


3  8  CONSTRUCTIVE 

ulative  thought  in  either  direction  beyond  the 
known  is  rational  only  when  it  proceeds  from 
the  same  principle,  viz.,  its  true  extension  in 
the  same  line  as  the  known,  that  is,  its  real 
analogy.  In  other  words,  in  both  cases,  on 
the  scientific  or  the  philosophical  side,  alike  in 
working  theories  and  in  living  faiths,  as  science 
reaches  backward  toward  natural  beginnings, 
or  philosophy  presses  on  toward  final  causes, 
the  degrees  of  probability  to  be  given  to  the 
views  of  origins  or  of  destiny  will  depend  upon 
the  same  common  measure,  viz.,  the  extension  of 
thought  out  into  the  unknown  in  the  same  di- 
rection as  the  line  of  experience  and  knowledge 
already  laid  down  in  experience  and  knowledge. 
It  is  by  this  rule  that  a  real  and  consequently 
fruitful  analogy  is  to  be  distinguished  from  a 
fanciful  and  barren  resemblance.  The  trueness, 
let  me  repeat,  either  of  a  scientific  working 
theory  or  a  living  belief,  to  the  line  or  curve  of 
experience  already  attained  is  the  common 
measure  of  its  probability,  the  same  rule  of 
reasonableness  by  which  it  is  to  be  measured. 
And  they  who  use  this  method  freely  at  the 
one  end  of  the  scale  have  least  of  all  right  to 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  39 

deny  the  same  principle  of  reasoning  at  the 
other  end  of  it.  Our  little  life  here  may  be 
compared  to  a  section  of  a  curve  the  elements 
of  which  are  calculable;  the  arc  which  it  spans 
is  full  enough  to  render  possible  some  deter- 
mination of  its  constants,  and  consequently 
some  conception  of  the  vaster  sweep  of  its  cur- 
vature, immeasurable  though  that  may  be. 
Hence  a  physical  science  or  experimental  psy- 
chology that  shall  successfully  determine  any 
elements  or  constants  of  our  present  experience 
is  to  be  welcomed  as  an  aid  to  the  religious  ap- 
prehension of  the  far-reaching  significance  of  our 
personal  life. 

If,  then,  after  this  experimental  method  with 
the  minimum  of  antecedent  hypothesis,  the 
new  natural  theology  shall  take  up  the  old 
problems  of  faith,  we  shall  not  begin  with 
Kant,  but  possibly  we  may  come  back  to 
Kant's  reverential  awe  of  the  starry  heavens 
and  the  moral  law,  having  dropped  on  the  way 
his  phenomenalism,  escaping  also  from  the 
dualism  of  Descartes  and  avoiding  the  artifi- 
cial monads  of  Leibnitz;  peradventure  to  find 
rest  for  our  wearied  philosophic  feet  in  a  per- 


4o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

sonai  realism— if  I  may  thus  indicate  in  a  sin- 
gle phrase  what  a  Frenchwoman  once  asked 
a  philosopher  to  do:  "Give  me,"  she  said,  "your 
philosophy  in  a  single  word."  It  would,  of 
course,  be  impossible  to  condense  within  the 
compass  of  these  lectures  the  critical  discus- 
sions or  to  enumerate  even  the  successive  facts 
of  significance  which  should  be  considered  in 
the  course  of  the  inquiry  which  has  just  been 
indicated;  nor  would  I  desire  by  giving  you  a 
too  condensed  lecture-tablet  to  occasion  on 
your  part  any  intellectual  indigestion.  But  the 
studious  task  required  by  this  method  of  nat- 
ural theology  may,  at  least,  be  made  clear.  It 
is  simply  to  hit  the  trail  through  nature  where 
best  we  may,  and  to  follow  it  closely  from  sign 
to  sign  as  far  as  we  possibly  can.1 

Amid  the  tangle  of  modern  questionings,  a 
student  of  divinity  may  feel  at  times  like 
Dante: 

"Midway  upon  the  journey  of  my  life, 
I  found  myself  within  a  forest  dark, 
For  the  straightforward  pathway  had  been  lost." 

1This  method  I  hope  to  follow  through  in  a  volume,  now  in 
preparation,  on  the  meaning  of  personality. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  41 

But,  unlike  Dante,  he  may  meet  no  disincar- 
nate  spirit  to  be  his  guide  from  sphere  to 
sphere.  He  can,  however,  notice  in  the  path- 
less forest  some  mark  of  seeming  insignificance, 
bits  of  moss,  bended  boughs,  or  leafy  growth 
on  one  side,  showing  whence  comes  the  pre- 
vailing wind  or  on  which  side  the  sunbeams 
fall.  He  may  descry  a  mark  that  seems  not 
accidental,  a  blaze  on  a  single  tree;  looking 
all  around  and  more  intently  he  may  see  an- 
other, and  still  another  blaze,  and  wonder  if 
these  indicate  any  definite  direction;  he  may 
ere  long  become  confident  that  he  is  following 
a  real  trail  and  hope  to  be  led  out  to  some 
clear  space.  To  see  the  signs,  to  recognize 
them  distinctly  where  they  are  to  be  seen,  and 
not  to  give  up  or  to  circle  around  with  aimless 
feet  as  one  hopelessly  lost  in  this  bewildering 
complexity  of  things — such  is  the  problem  of 
nature  and  humanity  for  keen-eyed  and  strong 
natural  theologians. 

Where  then  farthest  back  can  you  hit  the 
trail  to-day?  Not  where  the  science  of  the 
eighteenth  century  began;  not  where  the  sci- 
ence of  yesterday  stopped.     We  can  not  begin 


42  CONSTRUCTIVE 

the  pursuit  of  natural  theology  with  Herbert 
Spencers  biological  definitions,  which  at  best 
are  useful  only  as  artificial  horizons  may  be 
in  taking  one's  latitude;  nor  shall  we  begin  and 
end  where  Huxley's  automaton  stands  like 
Bunyan's  Mr.  Facing-Both-Ways;  nor  can  we 
be  content  to  abandon  the  search  with  Dar- 
win's accepted  principle  of  natural  selection: 
science  in  the  Darwinian  direction  has  already 
penetrated  farther  into  the  evolutionary  tangle 
of  conflicting  forces,  and  other  factors  hold  up 
to  observation  their  signs  of  meaning. 

At  what  point,  then,  does  science  enable  us 
to  get  a  positive  clutch  on  anything?  Well, 
just  at  present  the  last  jumping-ofT  place  of 
physics  into  the  unknown  and  the  inconceiv- 
able is  the  electron.  Whatever  that  may  prove 
to  be,  from  wherever  it  originated,  evidently 
it  came  to  do  something  worth  doing.  It  is 
certainly  a  very  active,  and  apparently  a  quite 
useful  intermediary  between  the  ether  of  space 
and  the  molecules  of  matter.  At  once  it  makes 
its  importance  felt;  it  is  the  first  mover  in  a 
stupendous  work  of  world-making.  Does  it 
give  any  hint  of  further  meaning?     Inspect  it 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  43 

more  closely.  You  will  not  expect  me  to  at- 
tempt to  expound  the  new  working  theory  of 
matter,  which  is  mathematically  intricate,  and 
which  is  still  only  in  initial  stages  of  verifica- 
tion. When  the  physicist  catches  the  electron 
in  his  laboratory,  our  interest  lies  in  putting 
to  it  the  same  old  question:  What  sign  showest 
thou?  What  sign,  if  any,  of  former  things  be- 
fore you,  or  pointing  toward  things  to  come? 
We  remember  that  Clerk  Maxwell  once  told 
us  that  the  atom  has  "the  essential  character 
of  a  manufactured  article."  *  Now  these  self- 
illuming  radium  atoms,  and  these  last  electric 
newcomers  into  observation,  tell  us  something 
more  intimately  of  the  structure  of  the  ma- 
terials of  which  the  worlds  are  made.  We  are 
informed  that  "the  existence  of  masses,  which 
are  much  smaller  than  that  of  the  smallest  of 
the  atoms  of  known  substances,  has  been  de- 
monstrated in  the  surest  possible  manner,  and 
by  purely  physical  methods."  2  These  infini- 
tesimals, we  are  told,  with  their  electric  charge, 
smaller   a   thousand   times   than   the   atom   of 

1  "Life  of  J.  Clerk  Maxwell,"  p.  359. 

2  Righi,  A.,  "Modern  Theory  of  Physical  Phenomena,"  p.  127. 


44  CONSTRUCTIVE 

hydrogen,  are  the  original  building-stones  of 
the  heavens  and  the  earth.1  Moreover,  we  are 
taught  that  these  electrons  would  seem  to  be 
the  elements  of  construction  of  the  architecture 
of  the  atoms.  Therefore  it  may  be  admitted 
that  a  material  atom  is  nothing  but  a  system 
composed  of  a  certain  number  of  positive  and 
an  equal  number  of  negative  electrons,  and 
that  the  latter,  or  at  least  some  of  them,  move 
about  the  remaining  portion  like  satellites2 — 
a  miniature  this  in  an  atom  of  a  solar  system. 
Nor  is  this  all  that  is  to  be  noted.  The  mass 
of  these  infinitesimal  particles  is  measurable, 
yet  it  is  found  to  vary  at  different  degrees  of 
temperature;  it  is  hence  inferred  that  its  mass 
is  in  part  at  least  more  apparent  than  real. 
Thus  substantiality,  as  we  ordinarily  conceive 
of  it,  to  the  scientific  eye  seems  to  vanish  from 
this  first  estate  of  matter.  Only  a  few  years 
ago  natural  philosophy  assumed  the  existence 
of  cosmic  ether,  and  atoms  of  ponderable  mat- 
ter; from  these  it  attempted  to  work  out  a 
mechanical    explanation    of   all    physical    phe- 

1  Rutherford  estimates  them  at  1,700  times  smaller. 
2/£.,  p.  151- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  45 

nomena.1  Now,  taking  a  fresh  start  from  the 
ether  and  the  electrons,  it  seeks  to  form  pon- 
derable matter  itself  out  of  these  imponder- 
ables, or  semi-imponderables.  It  succeeds,  per- 
haps, in  conceiving  more  satisfactorily  in  what 
the  electrical  current  consists,  but  we  know  no 
better  what  the  electrons  are  which  electricity 
is  a  current  of;  nor  have  we  discovered  how 
the  primeval  cosmic  ether  ever  gave  them  birth; 
by  what  strain  and  travail  of  primitive  nature 
were  brought  forth  these  electrons  by  whose 
unseen  hands  the  heavens  have  been  made. 
The  same  authority  in  physics  whose  words  I 
have  just  been  citing  introduces  his  exposition 
of  the  "modern  theory  of  physical  phenomena" 
with  the  remark  that,  in  spite  of  the  mystery 
of  electric  atoms,  "this  new  theory  may  per- 
haps acquire  not  a  little  importance  in  the  fu- 
ture, even  from  the  philosophic  point  of  view, 
since  it  points  out  a  new  method  of  consider- 
ing the  structure  of  ponderable  matter,  and 
tends  to  bring  back  to  a  single  origin  all  the 
phenomena  of  the  physical  world"  (p.  xiii). 
Now  that  is  precisely  what  I  would  say  it  is 
i  lb.,  p.  144. 


46  CONSTRUCTIVE 

the  business  of  natural  theology  to  do;  to  ob- 
serve what  discovered  things  tend  toward; 
what  nature  from  the  least  to  the  greatest 
shows  as  its  prevailing  tendency:  this  is  our 
problem  all  the  way  along,  to  follow  the  trail, 
and  not  to  lose  it.  These  electrons  in  them- 
selves prove  nothing,  but  what  is  their  sign? 
To  the  physicist  just  quoted,  they  bear  the 
sign  of  one  source:  they  bring  to  his  notice  a 
hint  of  monism,  although  that  may  not,  by 
itself  alone,  lead  so  far  as  monotheism. 

Observe  some  other  marks,  which  will  become 
more  noticeable  as  we  pass  on.  These  primal 
invisibles  of  matter  show  at  once  a  remarkable 
aptitude  for  combination;  and  fitness  to  en- 
ter into  combinations  characterizes  further  the 
molecules  charged  with  their  attractions.  The 
molecules  no  sooner  exist  than  they  seem  dis- 
posed to  enter  into  a  building  trust.  Out  of 
the  scattered,  competing  elements  of  space  the 
sun  has  certainly  formed  a  powerful  monopoly 
of  heat  and  light,  and  on  the  whole  a  benevo- 
lent despotism.  In  this  elemental  fitness  for 
combination  a  sign  is  given;  what  order  and 
government    of   the    heavens    and    earth    shall 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  47 

come  of  it,  only  the  age-long  history  of  the 
creation  shall  determine;  but  this  original 
adaptability  of  matter  to  take  form  and  to 
develop  systems,  is  prophetic  of  an  ordered 
universe  and  its  well-being.  These  atoms  of 
our  earth  contain  reminiscence  of  their  com- 
mon source,  and  our  fair  world  is  the  fulfilment 
of  their  prescience  of  a  kingdom  greater  than 
themselves  which  was  to  come.  Had  there 
been  an  intelligent  spirit  to  observe  these  atomic 
elements  when  they  first  appeared  in  space, 
there  would  have  been  potential  significance 
enough  in  their  coming  to  have  caused  such 
intelligence  to  look  forward  with  expectant 
wonder  to  behold  some  structural  idea  taking 
shape  and  substance  in  some  vast  construction. 
While  now  we  stand  gazing  into  the  heavens,  to 
us  is  revealed  the  glory  of  the  infinitely  great; 
as  we  look  down  into  the  dust  beneath  our  feet 
we  may  understand  the  infinite  significance  of 
the  infinitely  small. 

I  pause  for  a  moment  at  this  point  to  dwell  on 
a  new  phase  of  the  old  problem  which  is  opened 
by  what  since  Arrhenius's  work   may  be  re- 


48  CONSTRUCTIVE 

garded  as  the  science  of  cosmic-physics.  Some 
seventy  years  ago  that  acute  logician  Whewell, 
in  his  Bridgewater  treatise  entitled  "Astronomy 
and  General  Physics  Considered  with  Refer- 
ence to  Natural  Theology,"  availed  himself  of 
the  science  of  his  day  to  show  that  "a  great 
number  of  quantities  and  laws  appear  to  have 
been  selected  in  the  construction  of  the  universe; 
and  that,  by  the  adjustment  to  each  other  of 
the  magnitudes  and  laws  thus  selected,  the 
constitution  of  the  world  is  what  we  find  it,  and 
is  fitted  for  the  support  of  vegetables  and  ani- 
mals in  a  manner  in  which  it  could  not  have 
been,  if  the  properties  and  quantities  of  the 
elements  had  been  different  from  what  they 
are/' 1  Since  Darwin  biology  has  been  so  pre- 
occupied with  the  role  of  natural  selection  in  the 
organic  world  that  this  prior  question  of  the 
evolution  of  the  inorganic  world  to  be  the  en- 
vironment to  which  life,  when  it  came,  might 
fit  itself,jhas  been  generally  a  neglected  prob- 
lem; but  the  whole  biological  problem  runs 
directly  back  into  it.  Lockyer  and  others  have 
found  spectroscopic  evidence  of  several  succes- 

1  Fifth  edition,  p.  141. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  49 

sive  stages  in  the  development  of  the  stellar 
universe,  and,  as  the  different  color  indicates, 
the  evolution  of  elements  in  the  stars  is  now 
an  open  question.  We  have  thus  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  inorganic  world  what  has 
been  called  "delayed  utility";  the  successive 
stages  of  inorganic  evolution  bear  the  broad 
mark  of  prospective  utility.  To  the  pre-exist- 
ence  of  elemental  forms  and  potencies  we  owe 
our  existence  here  in  this  room  just  now;  and 
apart  from  us  all  these  were  not  made  perfect. 
Recently  a  physiological  chemist,  Professor 
Henderson  of  Harvard,  has  put  to  biology  anew 
this  question  concerning  "the  fitness  of  the 
environment/'  He  simplifies  the  problem,  and 
thus  renders  it  more  scientifically  determinable, 
by  narrowing  it  to  three  chief  elementary  con- 
ditions of  the  matter  fit  for  life  on  the  one 
hand,  and  to  three  distinctive  characters  of  life 
on  the  other  hand;1  and  then  he  seeks  to  dis- 
cover from  the  physical  and  chemical  point  of 
view  on  what  law  or  formative  principle  the 
anticipatory  development  of  the  former  became 

Carbon,   hydrogen,   oxygen  (with  carbon   compounds);   and 
complexity,  regulation,  metabolism  of  life. 


5o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

so  peculiarly  fitted  for  the  adaptation  to  it  of 
the  later  evolution  of  life.  He  reaches  this 
result:  "Given  matter,  energy,  and  the  result- 
ing necessity  that  life  shall  be  a  mechanism, 
the  conclusion  follows  that  the  atmosphere  of 
solid  bodies  does  actually  provide  the  best  of 
all  possible  environments  for  life."1  He  ex- 
cludes mere  contingency  in  his  endeavor  to 
find  the  formative  principle  of  the  fitness  of 
the  environment.  "There  is,  in  truth,"  he 
says,  "not  one  chance  in  countless  millions  of 
millions  that  the  many  unique  properties  of 
carbon,  hydrogen,  and  oxygen,  and  especially 
of  their  stable  compounds  water  and  carbonic 
acid,  which  chiefly  make  up  the  atmosphere  of 
a  new  planet,  should  simultaneously  occur  in 
three  elements  otherwise  than  through  the 
operation  of  a  natural  law  which  somehow  con- 
nects them  together.  There  is  no  greater  prob- 
ability that  these  unique  properties  should  be 
without  due  cause  uniquely  favorable  to  the 
organic  mechanism.  These  are  no  mere  acci- 
dents; an  explanation  is  to  seek.  It  must  be 
admitted,  however,  that  no  explanation  is  at 

Witness  of  the  Environment,  p.  273. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  51 

hand."  He  asks:  "How  does  it  come  about  that 
each  and  all  of  these  many  unique  properties 
should  be  favorable  to  the  organic  mechanism, 
should  fit  the  universe  for  life?  And  for  the 
answer  to  this  question  existing  knowledge  pro- 
vides, I  believe,  no  clew"  (pp.  278  sq.).  So 
chemistry  hands  over  this  promise  to  natural 
theology.     Can  it  suggest  a  clew? 

That  clew,  as  religious  students  and  teachers, 
we  are  to  search  out.  If  we  are  to  meet'the  mod- 
ern mind,  we  shall  not  be  satisfied  by  bringing 
a  ready-made  answer  from  some  once  living 
volume  of  philosophical  theism  now  laid  at 
rest  in  the  reference-library  tomb;  still  less  by 
preaching  with  vociferous  authority  from  lec- 
ture note-books;  not  by  intellectual  indolence 
shall  professional  teachers  of  religion  succeed 
in  apprehending  the  essential  meanings  of  the 
investigator's  facts  or  in  relieving  "the  torture 
of  an  intellect  pondering  the  world  problem"  in 
the  pew.  We,  ourselves,  must  be  strong  enough 
to  have  endured  the  pain  of  thinking;  how  can 
we  hope  in  our  preaching  to  help  the  suffering 
of  the  intellect  which  another  may  feel,  if  never 
in  our  theological  training  or  ministry  we  have 
first  felt  ourselves  the  pain  of  thinking? 


52  CONSTRUCTIVE 

To  him  to  whom 

"The  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears," 

the  clew  to  the  world  problem,  which  the  sci- 
entist seeks  in  vain,  may  be  disclosed;  yet  not 
to  him  without  wrestling  of  mind  with  the  un- 
known One  in  nature  until  the  day  break,  and 
the  nameless  One  is  known  in  the  inner  reveal- 
ing of  his  experience  of  himself,  his  Christ,  and 
his  God. 

A  course  of  natural  theology,  according  to 
the  method  just  outlined,  would  lead  from 
physical  science  next  into  general  biology,  and 
from  that  on  through  modern  psychology;  a 
critical  and  detailed  review  of  recent  researches 
and  discussions  in  these  sciences  would  be  re- 
quired for  a  thorough  construction  of  a  new 
natural  theology;  a  cursory  survey  only  of 
the  rich  materials  to  be  gathered  and  analyzed 
for  this  purpose  would  far  exceed  our  present 
limits.  My  immediate  object  is  not  so  much 
to  present  my  own  conclusions  from  such  stud- 
ies, but  rather  to  urge  the  conviction  that  these 
sciences  are  rich  in  fresh  material  to  be  worked 
over  in  religious  thought,  and  that  they  should 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  53 

be  deemed  a  necessary  part  of  a  good  theolog- 
ical education;  and  I  would  point  out  the  way 
in  which  such  inquiries  should  be  followed 
through,  as  far  as  reason  and  scientific  imagi- 
nation can  follow  them. 

A  few  general  observations  are  at  this  point 
not  unneeded.  A  caution  should  be  given  to 
the  public  in  general,  and  to  some  preachers  in 
particular,  against  a  too  ready  acceptance  of 
newspaper  or  popular  science,  excepting,  of 
course,  any  signed  articles  by  recognized  au- 
thorities. When  I  notice  sometimes  the  scien- 
tific news  and  still  more  remarkable  headlines 
in  the  press,  as  well  as  the  reports  that  emanate 
occasionally  through  press  bureaus  from  some 
laboratories,  in  which  experimental  work  is 
often  magnified  into  great  discoveries,  I  am  re- 
minded of  what  Erasmus  said  of  certain  specu- 
lations in  vogue  in  his  day:  "With  such  specu- 
lations nature  must  be  mightily  amused." 

In  answer  to  an  inquiry  of  mine,  what  course 
in  science  should  be  recommended  to  theological 
students  in  their  preparation  to  preach,  Pro- 
fessor Chittenden,  of  the  Sheffield  Scientific 
School  at  Yale,  once  wrote  a  letter  advising 


54  CONSTRUCTIVE 

for  the  curriculum  of  a  divinity  school  a  course 
in  general  biology.  That  should  not  be  left, 
in  my  opinion,  entirely  to  the  student's  frag- 
mentary reading,  or  to  the  remarks  of  a  pass- 
ing lecturer,  but  examination  in  general  biology 
should  be  required  of  candidates  for  the  degree 
of  Bachelors  in  Divinity.  Let  nothing  here  be 
said  in  disparagement  of  knowledge  of  the  con- 
struction of  the  language  of  the  law  and  the 
prophets,  or  of  the  root-meanings  of  the  w.ords 
in  which  the  Lord  conversed  with  his  disciples; 
but  who  are  we  to  preach  the  gospel  of  life  to 
the  people,  if  we  know  little  or  nothing  of  the 
grammar  of  the  language  of  the  Ancient  of  days, 
which  is  never  a  dead  language,  but  which  is 
the  word  new  every  morning  of  the  living  One  ? 
One  thing  needs  also  to  be  said  to  prevent 
religious  people  from  falling  into  needless  panic 
of  faith  in  view  of  occasional  claims  of  over- 
confident magazine  science.  We  should  bear  in 
mind  that  biology,  strictly  speaking,  has  to 
do  directly  with  living  matter,  not  with  an  ab- 
stract conception  of  life.  Vital  characters  come 
under  observation  as  connected  with  matter, 
and  as  such  the  more  that  can  be  found  out 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  55 

about  them,  physically  and  chemically,  the  bet- 
ter. It  is,  for  instance,  primarily  of  scientific 
interest,  but  not  of  religious  concern,  to  find 
out  whether  or  not,  as  the  schoolmen  believed, 
and  as  biologists  do  not  now  hold,  life  may 
spring  spontaneously  from  any  heap  of  refuse. 
We  may  never  know,  it  would  be  a  scientific  joy 
could  we  discover,  just  how,  under  what  con- 
ditions, matter  acquired  the  properties  which 
are  distinctively  vital.  And  if  by  any  possibil- 
ity we  should  ever  become  able,  through  more 
subtle  chemical  knowledge,  from  existing  ma- 
terials to  start  new  life  into  motion,  as  Loeb 
and  others  have  succeeded  in  actuating  the  ex- 
isting egg-cell;  in  such  further  triumph  of  sci- 
ence we  should  only  have  acquired  the  power 
of  thinking  another  of  God's  thoughts  after 
him.  There  are,  however,  two  sides  of  the 
biological  shield.  Descartes  began  a  long  dis- 
cussion when  he  attempted  to  find  a  physical 
explanation  of  vital  phenomena,  but  as  a  phi- 
losopher Descartes  was  far  from  being  a  mech- 
anist. He  said:  "One  thinks  metaphysically, 
but  one  lives  and  acts  physically."  At  pres- 
ent the  long-continued  controversy  between  vi- 


56  CONSTRUCTIVE 

talism  and  mechanism  seems  to  have  come  to 
a  pause  very  much  where  Descartes  left  it; 
this  is  the  biological  paradox:  life  is  mechanical, 
yet  the  mechanical  is  not  all  of  life.  The  bio- 
logical paradox,  as  I  would  call  it,  may  be  re- 
duced to  Lotze's  maxim:  "How  universal,  with- 
out exception,  is  the  extent,  and  at  the  same 
time  how  subordinate  is  the  significance  of  the 
part  which  mechanism  has  to  play  in  the  build- 
ing of  the  world. "  *  Similarly,  observe  also  the 
caution  which  Professor  Ernst  Mach  gives  against 
the  danger  of  using  the  concepts  of  physics  as 
identical  with  reality:  "We,  too,  should  beware 
lest  the  intellectual  machinery,  employed  in  the 
representation  of  the  world  on  the  stage  of 
thought,  be  regarded  as  the  basis  of  the  real 
world."  2 

It  is  true  that,  as  against  mechanistic  expla- 
nations of  vital  phenomena,  the  new  vitalism  of 
Driesch  and  others  has  still  tenable  ground  left 
on  some  of  the  properties  of  living  matter.  A 
cursory  enumeration  of  the  chief  characters  of 


1"Mikrokosmos,"  I,  s.  xv. 

2  "Die  Mechanik   in  ihrer   Entwicklung,"  p.  476;    Eng.  Tr., 
"Science  and  Mechanics."  p.  505. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  57 

life  that  resist  compression  into  a  cast-iron  me- 
chanical conception,  is  all  that  our  present  limits 
permit;  only  after  a  critical  study  can  their 
vital  significance  be  philosophically  estimated. 
Among  these  properties  is  a  certain  self-affirm- 
ing energy  of  the  organism.  It  asserts  and 
maintains  itself  in  relation  to  its  environment. 
This  is  something  more  than  the  inertia  of  a 
body,  or  the  structural  resistance  of  a  metal  to 
a  strain;  it  is  an  organic  capacity  to  maintain 
itself  as  a  whole  by  changing  to  some  extent 
its  relations  to  its  external  conditions,  and  this 
organic  adaptability  by  means  of  which  life 
survives  is  not  altogether  reducible  to  equa- 
tions of  purely  physical  stresses.  It  is  more 
than  mere  stability  of  structure,  however  it 
may  be  explained.  Thus  Ostwald  rightly  ob- 
serves that  under  changes  of  temperature  "life 
affirms  a  certain  condition,  although  the  influ- 
ences of  the  surroundings  change,"  as  water 
does  not.  "The  organism  reacts  actively,  the 
inorganic  passively."  He  also  has  happily  char- 
acterized life  as  "a  lamp  that  renews  the  oil 
which  it  uses."  l     Another  peculiar  character  of 

1  "Vorlesungen  iiber  Nat.  Phil.,"  pp.  314-316. 


58  CONSTRUCTIVE 

living  matter  is  the  directive  power  of  organ- 
isms over  their  own  reactions  and  motions. 
To  a  large  extent  these  seemingly  purposive  ac- 
tions among  the  lower  organisms  may  be  re- 
duced to  so-called  tropisms,  or  movements  to 
be  understood  as  chemical  and  physical  reac- 
tions; as,  for  example,  the  flight  of  moths  to- 
ward a  candle  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  result  of 
unsymmetrical  simulation  of  the  light  to  which 
their  motion  is  a  responsive  adjustment.  But 
some  biologists  are  not  ready  to  admit  that  the 
behavior  even  of  unicellular  organisms  can  be 
so  easily  and  entirely  explained  without  the 
recognition  of  some  directive  responsiveness  of 
the  organism.1  The  capacity  of  directive  re- 
sponsiveness, which  is  traceable  according  to 
Jennings'  studies  in  the  behavior  of  lower  or- 
ganisms, becomes  a  specific  capacity  of  animal 
life,  and  assumes  the  character  of  a  psycholog- 
ical fact  in  the  higher  stages  of  evolution. 

Together  with  other  vital  properties,  the  or- 
ganism acquires  the  character  of  educability. 
Living  matter  in  the  course  of  its  development 
shows  itself  to  be  educable  matter.     The  or- 

1  See  Jennings,  H.  L.,  "The  Behavior  of  Lower  Organisms." 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  59 

ganism  learns  by  trial  and  error;    it  is  taught 
through  acquired  experience. 

Still  another  striking  mark  of  the  organic  is 
its  regenerative  power.  This  characteristic  is 
generally  admitted  to  be  one  of  the  unique 
features  of  life,  most  unlike  any  possible  func- 
tions of  machines,  such  as  we  may  make.  In 
some  of  the  lower  organisms,  within  certain 
limits,  a  single  part  has  power  to  reproduce  the 
entire  organism;  a  certain  regenerative  energy 
therefore  seems  to  be  diffused  through  the  whole 
body.  Moreover,  the  organism  as  a  whole 
seems  to  have  some  regenerative  control  over 
its  parts.  If  it  is  merely  a  machine,  it  is  a 
machine  having  this  twofold  capacity;  it  can 
restore  a  lost  or  broken  part,  and  a  part  of  it 
can  remake  the  whole  of  it.  "A  very  strange 
sort  of  a  machine,"  remarks  Driesch,  "which 
is  the  same  in  all  its  parts. "  The  farthest  our 
mechanics  has  gone  is  to  manufacture  machines 
with  exactly  interchangeable  parts.  A  curious 
peculiarity  also  has  been  noticed  by  Driesch, 
which  he  calls  "  retro-differentiation, "  by  which 
he  designates  this  remarkable  procedure:  in 
the  process  of  restoring  an  injured  or  lost  part, 


6o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

some  organisms  have  been  observed  to  discard 
a  first-attempt  piece,  and  to  replace  it  by  a 
new  part  which  fits  better.1  This  resembles 
very  much  a  trial  process  in  some  efforts  of  the 
organism  to  repair  itself. 

Passing  by  several  specialized  qualities  of 
living  matter,  another  organic  character  may 
be  mentioned  as  unique — the  power  of  making 
preparation  for  future  contingencies. 

In  a  great  variety  of  ways  this  character  is 
displayed,  not  only  in  animal  instincts  and 
habits  that  lead  to  laying  up  a  store  of  food 
for  future  use,  but  even  more  curiously  in  some 
instances  of  anticipatory  provision  for  the  bene- 
fit of  offspring.  This  consists  not  simply  of 
the  preparation  which  the  parent  may  instinc- 
tively make  for  its  progeny,  but  provisions  seem 
to  have  been  subtly  wrought  by  nature  herself 
into  the  very  growth  and  structure  of  organic 
forms,  by  means  of  which  contingencies  of 
which  the  parents  could  have  had  no  experi- 
ence are  foreseen  and  provided  for;  not  a  few 
such  instances  of  organic  prescience  might  be 
cited    from    descriptive   natural    histories.     In 

1  lb.,  vol.  I,  p.  163. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  61 

the  embryonic  development  of  some  species, 
biologists  have  noticed  "structures  which  form 
no  organic  part  of  the  young,  yet  which  at  the 
same  time  indicate  accurately  what  the  young 
will  need  at  some  future  time.,,  For  example, 
there  is  a  certain  shark-like  fish  (Chimera  C. 
colliei),  the  egg  of  which  is  contained  in  a  cap- 
sule constructed  with  apparent  prevision  of  the 
future  growth  and  needs  of  the  progeny.  By 
ten  different  characters  "the  egg-capsule  was 
found  to  be  specialized,  i.  e.,  adapted  for  the 
embryo  at  a  late  stage  of  development.  .  .  . 
(i)  The  capsule  '  foresees '  with  startling  exact- 
ness the  size  and  shape  of  the  young  fish  when 
many  months  hence  it  comes  to  hatch  out,  and 
(2)  it  provides  a  series  of  progressive  modifica- 
tions adapted  to  the  developing  physiological 
needs  of  the  young."  The  biologist  who  has 
observed  these  corresponding  characters  which 
have  thus  been  acquired  in  two  distinct  courses 
of  development,  computes  the  chances  for  two 
such  favorable  coincident  variations  to  be  as 
one  in  a  million;  and  for  three  in  succession 
as  one  in  a  billion.  He  says:  "Natural  selec- 
tion  of  fortuitous   variations    is,   accordingly, 


62  CONSTRUCTIVE 

clearly  valueless  in  explaining  the  evolution  of 
the  present  capsule.  The  capsule  of  Chimcera 
must  stand,  I  believe,  as  an  instance  of  deter- 
minate direction. "  * 

The  argument  from  these  and  other  special 
characters  of  living  matter  should  not  be 
pressed  too  far.  They  are  not  proofs  of  any 
theory  of  the  nature  of  life,  but  they  are  in- 
dications of  some  further  meaning  to  be  dis- 
cerned. They  do  not  disprove  mechanistic  con- 
ceptions, so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  discover 
the  mechanical  means  and  principles  in  the 
constitution  and  operation  of  organic  nature, 
but  they  are  indicative  of  the  presence  of  other 
factors  of  evolution,  and  they  open  the  possi- 
bility of  their  working  in  and  through  known 
chemical  and  physical  conditions.  They  have 
further  significance  to  be  recognized  in  scien- 
tific investigation;  what  their  final  meaning  is 
may  be  determined  only  as  we  endeavor  to  in- 
terpret them  in  relation  to  other  known  facts 
of  higher  significance,  as  we  may  succeed  phil- 
osophically  to    apprehend    them    in    the    "to- 

1  Bashford  Dean  in  Biol.  Bulletin,  Woods'  Holl,  vol.  VII,  1904, 
pp.  105  sq. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  63 

gether"  of  nature.  As  signs  of  a  rational  order 
in  nature  such  characters  once  so  impressed 
Huxley  that  he  said:  "A  course  of  organic  ev- 
olution is  a  materialized  logical  process. "  To 
which  a  Scotch  biologist  added  the  remark: 
"Evolution  is  a  materialized  ethical  process. " 
And  an  American  biologist  concludes  a  study 
of  regenerative  phenomena  with  these  words: 
"Something  more  is  included  in  these  phe- 
nomena, I  think,  than  can  be  explained  by 
simple  physical  interaction,  or  by  chemical  in- 
fluences. .  .  .  The  process  that  takes  place  sug- 
gests that  something  like  an  intelligent  process 
must  be  at  work."  In  true  Aristotelian  fashion 
he  observes,  "The  form  controls  the  material, 
and  it  is  not  to  be  physically  explained."  * 

The  fundamental  question  between  a  ma- 
terialistic and  a  spiritualistic  conception  of  the 
organic  world  is  not  thought  through  if  we 
stop  with  the  conclusion  that  living  matter 
manifests  characters  and  performs  work  unlike 
any  artificial  machines.  Professor  Loeb  ad- 
mits that  "the  fact  that  the  machines  which 
can  be  created  by  man  do  not  possess  the  power 

1T.  H.  Morgan,  "Biological  Lectures,"  Woods'  Holl,  1898,  p. 
366, 


64  CONSTRUCTIVE 

of  automatic  development,  self-preservation 
and  reproduction,  constitutes  for  the  present  a 
fundamental  difference  between  living  machines 
and  artificial  machines. "  He  says:  "Living 
organisms  may  be  called  chemical  machines,  in- 
asmuch as  the  energy  for  their  work  and  func- 
tions is  derived  from  chemical  processes,  and  in- 
asmuch as  the  material  from  which  the  living 
machines  are  built  must  be  formed  through 
chemical  processes. " 1  He  holds  that  nothing 
contradicts  the  possibility  that  these  living 
chemical  machines  may  be  artificially  con- 
structed. He  would  offset  the  chances  against 
the  natural  evolution  of  living  machines  by  the 
probabilities  that  an  innumerable  number  of 
failures  must  have  occurred  in  nature's  con- 
structions, while  we  know  only  the  fortunate 
successes.2  When  hard  pressed  with  difficulties 
the  mechanical  theory  can  always  take  refuge 
in  Loeb's  saving  clause,  "for  the  present,"  and 
answer  that  in  the  experiments  of  countless  ages 
nature  may  have  turned  out  some  surprisingly 
fine  products. 

Moreover,  the  fundamental  question  of  the 

1  "Dynamics  of  Living  Matter,"  p.  I. 

* "  Mechanistic  Conception  of  Life,"  pp.  24  sg. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  65 

meaning  of  life  is  not  thought  through,  if  the 
reasoning  stops  with  the  apparent  specific  dis- 
tinctions between  inorganic  and  living  matter. 
There  must  be  one  measure  of  value  and  the 
same  final  interpretation  for  both.  Natural 
theology  puts  itself  at  stake  on  a  side  issue,  if 
it  would  risk  all  on  the  assumption  of  a  creative 
break  between  the  two.  Loeb  may  rightly  re- 
ply that  if,  as  he  holds,  the  durable  chemical 
elements  are  only  the  product  of  blind  forces, 
then  he  is  justified  in  affirming,  "there  is  no 
reason  for  conceiving  otherwise  the  durable  sys- 
tems in  living  nature." 

The  search  for  the  real  meaning  of  the  world 
must  follow  things  through  as  one  connected 
course,  and  the  reasoning  must  not  stop  abruptly 
at  any  part;  only  so  far  as  we  can  gain  a  world- 
view  in  which  all  the  parts  are  seen  in  their 
correlations,  and  when  taken  together  as  con- 
stituting a  rational  whole,  shall  we  gain  rea- 
sonable assurance  that  our  thought  apprehends 
the  reality  of  being,  that  we  know  indeed,  though 
as  yet  but  in  part.  Here  we  may  apply  the  old 
maxim  of  the  Greeks,  and  beyond  all  the  me- 
chanical means  and  principles  of  nature,  "Look 


66  CONSTRUCTIVE 

to  the  end."  The  values  of  the  end-product 
may  tell  the  whole  story  of  nature;  what  is  the 
final  product  like — is  it  godlike?  What  is  our 
personal  life  worth  living  for?  By  whatever 
mechanical  means  or  elementary  courses,  has 
something  eventuated  which  has  value  not 
mathematically  calculable,  something  qualita- 
tively good  besides  being  materially  well  put 
together?  The  true  interpretation  will  come 
back  from  the  end  of  the  whole  story.  Which 
is  the  explanation  of  the  other — the  material 
of  the  mental,  the  mechanical  of  the  ethical; 
or  is  the  end-result  of  mind  and  moral  value 
the  interpretation  of  all  that  has  been  before  it 
from  the  beginning? 

At  this  point,  therefore,  in  a  natural  theology 
that  would  follow  closely  the  way  of  nature's 
progressive  self-revelation,  we  are  content  sim- 
ply to  say  that  these  significant  phenomena  of 
both  inorganic  and  living  matter,  which  we 
have  thus  rapidly  surveyed,  are  not  in  them- 
selves proofs  of  any  theory  of  nature,  but  that 
they  give  an  impression  of  thoughtfulness  in 
the  constitution  and  processes  of  nature,  and 
that   they  are  suggestive  of  some   immanent, 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  67 

determinate  direction  in  evolution,  although  not 
by  themselves  finally  demonstrative  of  intel- 
ligent guidance.  The  presence  of  some  "un- 
known factor' '  in  nature  is  everywhere  to  be 
felt;  that  factor  seems  to  indicate  some  energy 
of  mind  in  forming  matter,  an  energizing  that 
is  superhuman,  but  not  necessarily  supernat- 
ural. By  whatever  means  wrought  out,  nature 
seems  to  have  been  first  thought  out.  For 
the  real  and  conclusive  interpretation  of  evolu- 
tion the  last  question  to  be  determined  is: 
whether  of  every  living  creature  the  prophet 
Ezekiel's  vision  holds  true  or  not;  whether  the 
mechanic  who  sees  the  wheels  only,  and  figures 
out  mathematically  the  laws  of  their  motions, 
sees  all  there  is  within  the  wheels  to  be  known; 
or  whether  the  vision  also  of  the  Spirit  within 
the  wheels  is  true  insight,  and  their  higher  law 
is,  "  Whithersoever  it  moves  they  move." 

The  next  part  of  the  path  which  from  sign 
to  sign  of  meaning  I  would  point  out  will  lead 
us  to  higher  ground,  and  leave  us  before  the 
supreme  fact  in  nature  of  the  personality  of 
the  Christ. 


Ill 

CHRIST  AS  FINAL  FACT  OF  NATURE 

"DEFORE  leaving  the  biological  field  and 
approaching  the  subject  of  this  lecture, 
I  am  asked  to  consider  a  question  which  may 
remain  in  some  minds.  Those  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  regard  life  as  something  wholly  apart, 
manifesting  a  distinct  vital  force,  will  at  once 
say:  If,  with  the  biologists  we  are  to  speak 
strictly  of  living  matter,  should  we  not  also 
speak  of  thinking  matter;  and  if  so,  when  the 
matter  goes,  does  everything  go  with  it,  and 
what  of  us  would  be  left?  Well,  that  is  very 
much  the  way  in  which  years  ago  Pascal  in 
one  of  his  profound  thoughts  did  speak — it  is 
a  famous  passage:  "Man  is  but  a  reed,  the 
weakest  in  nature,  but  he  is  a  thinking  reed. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  the  entire  universe 
arm  itself  to  crush  him.  A  breath  of  air,  a 
drop  of  water  suffices  to  kill  him.     But  were 

68 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  69 

the  universe  to  crush  him,  man  would  still  be 
more  noble  than  that  which  kills  him,  because 
he  knows  that  he  dies,  and  the  universe  knows 
nothing  of  the  advantage  it  has  over  him" 
(ch.  ii,  x).  In  the  living  matter,  in  the  think- 
ing reed,  is  contained  the  potency  and  the 
meaning  of  the  world. 

Besides  what  was  urged  at  the  close  of  the 
last  lecture,  in  a  somewhat  different  way  let 
me  put  the  answer  which  in  accordance  with 
biological  science  may  be  given  to  this  ques- 
tion. It  may  be  stated  more  concretely  as 
follows:  Here  is  a  loaf  of  bread,  we  will  say, 
existing  to  be  digested  by  a  man.  Suppose 
the  universe  likewise  to  be  given  us  to  be  un- 
derstood or  mentally  digested;  there  is  this 
difference,  however:  when  a  loaf  of  bread  is 
before  us  to  be  examined,  we  are  outside  of  it; 
we  are,  that  is,  philosophically  speaking,  tran- 
scendental to  the  loaf,  and  we  may  find  out 
who  made  it.  But  we  are  inside  the  universe, 
and  it  is  inside  us;  to  know  what  it  is,  and 
what  we  mean,  we  must  take  ourselves  as  im- 
manent in  and  parts  of  it.  We  may  not  hold 
it  up  before  us,  and  look  outside  of  it  for  its 


7o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

Maker.  The  older  natural  theology  took  up 
the  world-problem,  like  Paley's  watch,  as  some- 
thing external  which  the  observer  found  to 
examine;  modern  science  does  not  take  up  the 
problem  in  that  way.  Our  position,  as  scien- 
tifically conceived,  resembles  that  which  the 
watch  might  be  imagined  to  assume  if  it  had 
somehow  become  conscious  of  itself  and  won- 
dered what  it  was,  and  what  the  time  meant 
that  it  seemed  to  be  keeping  with  every  tick. 
Our  living,  our  thinking,  to  put  the  com- 
parison broadly,  is  as  though  the  yeast  in  the 
bread,  or  the  enzyme  in  its  digestion,  had  be- 
come aware  of  itself  and  its  action,  and  won- 
dered what  it  was  all  for;  or  as  though  the 
mainspring  in  the  watch,  becoming  conscious 
of  its  energy,  began  to  speculate  concerning 
what  all  the  mechanism  around  it  meant.  This 
is  our  position  and  our  problem  of  knowledge. 
How,  then,  does  the  scientist  attack  this  prob- 
lem of  the  world's  knowledge  of  itself  in  his 
knowing  it?  He  replies,  it  is  for  us  to  investi- 
gate how  it  works,  what  it  is  made  of,  and  how 
the  things  put  together  in  it  behave  toward 
one  another.     And  he  has   been  finding  that 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  71 

out.  He  is  learning  every  day  something  new 
as  to  how  things  work,  and  work  together. 
That  is  what  Professor  Loeb  did  when  he 
started  up  an  unfertilized  egg,  and,  exhilarated 
by  his  own  access  of  knowledge,  jumped  to  the 
conclusion  that  some  day  we  may  know  it  all; 
very  much  as  Democritus  of  old  once  said,  "I 
am  about  to  speak  of  all  things."  The  biolo- 
gists, a  laborious  multitude  of  them,  are  search- 
ing farther  and  deeper,  and  at  every  step  they 
find  more  chemistry  and  more  physics;  but 
they  do  not  find  any  other  specific  force  in 
their  analysis  of  the  phenomena  of  life.  Thus, 
Mr.  Thomas  B.  Osborn,  at  the  experiment  sta- 
tion here  in  our  city,  for  many  years  has  been  in- 
dustriously picking  out  different  proteins  from 
grains  of  wheat  and  other  foodstuffs,  and  trying 
them  with  interesting  and  valuable  results  on 
white  rats;  and  with  each  result  of  analysis 
he  finds  further  intricate  problems  of  physio- 
logical chemistry  to  be  worked  out.  Slowly 
but  surely  positive  science  is  extending  our 
knowledge  over  the  field  of  vital  phenomena; 
it  is  an  indefinite  regress  of  knowledge  in  this 
direction;    but  less  and  less  with   this  exten- 


72  CONSTRUCTIVE 

sion  of  knowledge  grows  the  space  where  any 
such  specific  energy  as  a  vital  force  may  be 
discovered.  Indeed,  the  biologists  generally  no 
longer  trouble  themselves  about  it  any  more 
than  we  do  about  ghosts.  What  then?  Is  it 
all  over  with  us?  Is  the  discovered  mecha- 
nism of  the  universe  nothing, but  materialism? 
Do  the  mathematicians  compel  us,  as  Mrs. 
Browning  puts  it,  to  apprehend  God  himself 

"As  the  bare  result 
Of  what  his  hand  materially  has  made, 
Expressed  in  such  an  algebraic  sign 
Called  God; — that  is,  to  put  it  otherwise, 
They  add  up  nature  to  a  naught  of  God, 
And  cross  the  quotient." 

Nay;  the  very  success  of  our  knowledge  of 
the  mechanism  of  nature  is  the  failure  of  an 
interpretation  of  it  as  materialism.  It  excludes 
any  fortuitous  explanation,  and  compels  ac- 
ceptance of  some  rational  principle  in  its  inter- 
pretation. The  more  the  working  parts  are 
understood,  the  less  as  a  whole  does  the  mech- 
anism explain  its  own  existence.  The  decisive 
point  is  not  that  one  part  is  inorganic  and 
another  organic;    it  is  not  the  fact  that   one 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  73 

order  of  nature  sleeps  in  seeming  unconscious- 
ness of  itself,  while  another  has  awakened  to 
awareness  of  its  activities;  nor  is  it  the  fact 
that,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  no  breaks  or  inter- 
ruptions occur  in  the  course  of  nature:  the 
point  of  decisive  significance  is  the  constitutive 
fact  of  formative  motion,  of  motion  taking 
form,  of  form  determining  motion;  it  is  the 
wonderful  fact  that,  taken  all  together,  nature 
has  significance  becoming  more  significant  the 
better  we  know  it,  and  the  more  we  are  learning 
scientifically  how  all  things  work  together  for 
what  seems  to  us  to  be  good;  it  is  the  out- 
standing fact  that  the  universe — suns  and  stars 
and  all — just  here  at  least  on  this  little  earth, 
has  come  to  awareness  of  itself  in  our  conscious 
thinking  of  it:  this  fact  it  is  which  the  sciences, 
looking  up  from  their  successes,  give  over  for 
interpretation  to  the  man  to  know  who  knows 
himself.  Among  these  proteins  and  enzymes, 
of  which  his  bread  of  life  is  made,  he  has  be- 
come aware  of  the  meaning  of  himself  to  him- 
self, and  in  the  light  of  his  own  being  he  would 
discern  the  meaning  of  his  world.  In  other 
words,  it  is  not  the  things  known,  but  the  know- 


74  CONSTRUCTIVE 

ing  them;  not  the  things  formed,  but  the  form- 
ing them;  not  the  world  apart  from  thinking, 
but  thinking  immanent  in  the  world  that  shall 
yield  the  secret  of  the  essential  truth  and  being 
of  it.  As  both  pupil  and  heir  of  all  the  sciences 
it  shall  be  the  burden  and  the  joy  of  the  the- 
ologian of  nature  to  seek  for  this  essential  truth 
of  being  as  nature's  hidden  treasure. 

Aristotle,  with  his  penetrating  distinctions 
of  matter  and  form,  may  help  at  this  point 
to  clear  up  our  thinking.  When  the  eminent 
German  biologist,  Driesch,  comes  to  the  cru- 
cial point  of  his  elaborate  discussion  of  the 
"Science  and  Philosophy  of  the  Organism," 
after  all  his  analysis  and  systemization  of  the 
results  of  biological  research,  he  falls  back  on 
Aristotle's  conception  of  things  that  have  their 
forms  or  ends  in  themselves — their  so-called 
entelechies.  As  a  man  of  science,  in  his  philo- 
sophic interpretation  of  the  organism,  he  takes 
his  final  stand  on  this  entelechy  of  nature,  not 
indeed  against  mechanistic  knowledge  of  vital 
phenomena,  but  above  any  materialistic  theory 
of  the  organic  world  that  would  reduce  it  to 
an  unintelligible  heap  of  things. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  75 

To  put,  then,  the  whole  matter  in  a  single 
antithetic  sentence,  the  first  question  is  not 
how  things  have  happened  to  get  into  form, 
but  why  form  ever  got  into  things.  And  the 
last  question  is,  not  for  what  purpose  did  things 
get  themselves  into  such  good  form,  but  what 
the  form  actually  found  to  be  existent  in  things 
is  good  for.  In  fine,  the  interpretation  of  na- 
ture is  a  question  of  formative  motion  at  the 
beginning  and  of  human  values  at  the  present 
end  of  evolution. 

In  the  method  of  inquiry  which  I  am  out- 
lining we  should  pass  next  into  the  domain 
of  modern  descriptive  and  genetic  psychology. 
But  here  likewise  the  literature  is  too  exten- 
sive to  permit  of  a  critical  review  within  our 
present  limits  of  the  evidential  value  of  the 
facts  bearing  on  our  line  of  reasoning  from  sign 
to  sign  of  meaning  in  the  course  of  nature  and 
human  history.  Passing  over,  therefore,  with- 
out so  much  as  a  cursory  survey  this  portion  of 
the  inquiry  which  the  new  natural  theology 
must  thoroughly  investigate,  we  confront  the 
last,  best-known  fact  in  nature — the  final  fact 
of  personality.  Its  consummate  realization  is 
the  person  of  Jesus,  the  Christ. 


76  CONSTRUCTIVE 

From  whatever  point  in  nature  or  in  human 
history  we  may  choose  to  start,  if  we  follow 
the  way  through,  we  come  out  at  length  in  full 
view  of  the  supernal  Christ-fact  of  personality 
upon  this  earth,  above  all  others,  positive  and 
pure  as  the  Jungfrau  among  the  Alps,  ascend- 
ing till  its  summit  is  lost  from  sight  in  the  glory 
of  the  evening  cloud. 

Does  it  seem  a  venturesome  attempt  to  ap- 
proach the  person  of  the  Christ  from  the  na- 
ture side,  and  to  read  the  meaning  of  human 
life  in  the  personal  consciousness  of  Jesus  ?  Yet 
the  Son  of  man  has  his  place  and  hour  in  the 
continuity  of  nature,  and  his  life  is  moment 
and  part  of  human  history.  Nature  itself  leads 
to  the  consummate  Man.  And  the  inner  con- 
sciousness of  the  perfect  man  throws  back  its 
light  on  all  that  has  been  before  him.  So  far 
then  as  we  may  enter  into  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  Jesus,  we  may  enter  more  deeply  into 
the  significance  of  our  own  life  and  of  the  whole 
course  of  natural  development  from  which  we 
have  come  to  be  ourselves.  Personality,  ours 
and  his,  is  to  be  finally  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  the  Christ  of  nature,  the  Christ  of  history, 
and  the  Christ  of  experience.     Either  part  of 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  77 

this  interpretation  is  incomplete  without  the 
others.  Separate  these  three  primary  aspects 
of  the  person  of  Christ  entirely  from  one  an- 
other, and  we  break  the  perfect  simplicity  of 
the  Light  of  the  world. 

In  pursuing  further  this  inquiry,  natural 
theology  runs  over  into  revealed;  but  the 
point  of  view  will  be  retained;  from  the  nature 
side,  and  as  involved  in  the  course  of  nature, 
we  look  to  the  Christ  of  history  and  experience 
as  the  end  and  final  meaning  of  all  the  way  of 
evolution.  Both  the  man  of  science  and  the 
man  of  faith  have  right  to  stand  on  holy  ground. 
When  Moses  saw  the  burning  bush,  he  was  a 
natural  scientist  when  he  said,  "I  will  turn 
aside  now,  and  see  why  the  bush  is  not  burnt." 
Moses  was  a  religious  man  when  from  out  of 
the  midst  of  the  bush  he  heard  God  calling 
him,  and  he  hid  his  face,  for  he  was  afraid  to 
look  upon  God.  Mrs.  Browning  says  "every 
bush  is  aflame  with  God."  If,  then,  we  turn 
aside  with  our  science  to  see  how  out  of  the 
midst  of  the  natural  there  appears  a  flame  so 
divine,  we  shall  find  ourselves  in  a  presence 
that  is  a  revealing  light  in  nature,  yet  as  the 


78  CONSTRUCTIVE 

flame  that  does  not  consume.  Moses  quickly 
forgot  his  question,  Why?  in  that  Presence;  we 
may  the  more  readily  receive  the  revelation  if 
we  shall  have  discerned  that  the  material  world 
is  made  for  the  indwelling  of  the  spiritual,  and 
how  naturally  from  the  midst  of  it  the  uncon- 
suming  flame  shines  out.  It  is  with  such  rev- 
erential desire  that  natural  theology  approaches 
the  holy  ground  of  the  Christian  theophany, 
and  asks  what  sign  does  it  give?  As  final  lu- 
minous fact  in  nature,  what  is  the  meaning  of 
the  potential  personality  of  the  Christ? 

This,  our  modern  question  concerning  the 
Christ,  is  primarily  one  of  dynamics — the  dy- 
namic of  his  mighty  personality. 

The  fundamental  problem  of  natural  science 
concerns  energetics:  What  in  the  last  analysis 
is  the  energy  of  nature?  whence  its  source? 
Give  me  matter  and  motion,  once  said  a  phi- 
losopher, and  I  could  create  the  world.  But 
that  is  the  rub;  give  us  matter  in  motion,  and 
one  might  imagine  how  on  mechanical  principles 
much  might  be  created.  But  a  third  postu- 
late would  have  to  be  granted  in  order  for  us 
to  imagine  how  such  a  world  as  ours  could  have 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  79 

been  made:  give  us  matter  and  motion,  and 
also  form — form-giving  motion — and  it  would 
be  easier  to  conceive  how  the  world  was  made. 
All  the  way  along  the  first  and  the  last  ques- 
tion of  the  philosophy  of  evolution  is  the  dy- 
namical interrogation,  whence  and  what  are 
the  potentials  of  matter,  of  life,  of  animal  in- 
telligence, of  humanity?  And  with  this  ques- 
tion at  the  heart  of  our  scientific  knowledge  we 
turn  to  the  mighty  working  of  the  Son  of  man, 
the  dynamic  of  the  life  of  the  Christ  in  the 
world.  What  is  its  source,  its  kinetic  mani- 
festation in  history,  its  conservation  in  the 
Christian  consciousness?  What  presence  of 
God  is  this?  The  yesterdays  of  creation  were 
potential  with  it;  the  to-day  of  the  personal 
influence  of  the  Christ  knows  it  supremely; 
the  to-morrow  of  humanity  shall  fill  up  the 
measure  of  this  divine  dynamic  in  the  history 
of  the  world. 

The  cosmic  problem  of  a  divine  dynamic 
confronts  natural  theology  when,  having  still 
on  its  lips  the  final  question  of  the  sciences, 
it  draws  near  and  inquires  of  the  Christ,  What 
workest  thou  ?  what  sign  through  the  centuries 


8o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

dost  thou  give?     Think  not  that  lightly  or  by  a 
ministry  of  unstudious  popularity  this  question 
can  be  answered   to  an   age  that  never  more 
seriously  than  now  lifts  up  its  supreme  doubt  to 
the  supernal  Man.     It  is  the  call  of  the  Chris- 
tian  ministry   above  everything  else  to  know 
Jesus  Christ  and  him  crucified;    to  know  him 
not  only  for  the  man  on  the  street  in  his  strug- 
gle with  the  world,  but  to  know  the  Christ  for 
the  solitary   man    in    the  vigil  of  his  intellect 
in  the  mystery  of  life;  and  you  can  not  know 
your  Christ,  as  he  waits  for  men  to  know  him, 
save  as  you  yourself  shall  first  seek  to  behold 
him,  him  only,  him    supremely,  as    he    stands 
in  the  midst  of  the  sciences,  fulfilling  all  knowl- 
edge in  the  higher  Verilies  of  his  consciousness 
of  God. 

In  order  to  gain  a  clearer  appreciation  of 
the  potential  personality  of  Jesus,  one  should 
not  fail  to  observe  the  natural  possibilities  of 
new  influx  of  power,  and  of  marked  acceler- 
ations likewise  of  spiritual  energy  at  favor- 
able points  in  a  chosen  line  of  descent.  A 
cumulative  heredity  at  times  will  knot  threads 
of  life  together  in  a  strong  personality;  or,  like 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  Si 

the  sudden  mutation  in  De  Vries'  primroses, 
creative  of  a  double  flower,  unexpectedly  a 
spiritual  genius  may  blossom  out.  We  are  far 
from  knowing  the  full  measure  of  the  power  of 
mind  in  and  through  matter,  and  the  natural 
potency  of  the  human  spiritual  energy  may  be 
more  dominant  and  farther  reaching  than  our 
sciences  have  as  yet  followed  or  can  verify. 
Psychology  of  late  has  been  pushing  farther 
back  the  limits  of  personal  experience  around 
the  whole  field  of  consciousness,  throwing  it 
open  to  influences  from  far  and  near,  from  the 
superconscious  as  well  as  the  subconscious;  so 
that  one  can  hardly  tell  nowadays  just  where 
he  himself  in  any  direction  does  begin  or  may 
leave  off*.  In  very  truth  we  are  every  moment 
our  finite  selves  in  the  presence  of  the  infinite 
and  the  eternal.  From  a  thorough  apprecia- 
tion, then,  of  the  immense  personal  potential 
of  man's  being,  with  its  future  possibilities  to 
which  our  present  limitations  may  not  set 
bounds,  we  are  to  approach  the  potential  per- 
sonality of  Jesus,  the  Christ. 

We  shall  thus  have  learned  how,  in  the  cradle 
of  natural  tendencies  and  conjunctions,  a  new 


82  CONSTRUCTIVE 

power  may  be  nurtured,  a  new  will  sent  forth 
to  do  some  will  of  God.  It  is  with  no  irrever- 
ent curiosity,  therefore,  that  natural  theology 
will  ask  what  may  be  said  concerning  the  psy- 
cho-physiological preparation  for  the  advent  of 
Jesus.  For  this  purpose  those  scribes  who  kept 
the  book  of  his  generations  may  have  been 
guided  by  a  more  far-sighted  wisdom  than  they 
dreamed,  and  for  our  information  have  wrought 
better  than  they  knew.  For  to  us,  children  of 
this  scientific  age,  these  genealogies  give  Jesus 
a  chosen  place  in  nature's  line  of  promise;  they 
serve  to  bring  his  spiritual  ascendency  from  his 
birth  more  profoundly  into  harmony  with  nat- 
ural law;  not  without  the  coworking  of  natural 
selective  agencies  was  the  way  prepared  for  the 
coming  of  one  who  should  be  born  the  spiritual 
king  among  men. 

In  this  connection  a  word  should  not  be  left 
unsaid  concerning  the  narrative  of  the  virgin 
birth.  We  leave  to  the  biblical  critics  the 
question  of  the  origin  of  that  belief;  very  likely 
it  may  have  been  one  of  the  earlier  after- 
thoughts of  some  of  his  disciples  concerning 
their   risen    Lord — their   reflection    back   upon 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  83 

his  nativity  of  their  knowledge  of  his  more 
wondrous  life.  Nor  from  our  present  point  of 
view  are  we  concerned  just  now  with  the  sub- 
stance of  the  faith  underlying  the  words,  "born 
of  the  Virgin  Mary."  It  lies  beyond  our  prov- 
ince to  discuss  in  passing  how  rightly  we  should 
use  in  our  churches  the  ancient  symbols  of  the 
faith — not,  indeed,  in  slavish  literalness,  but  as 
that  great  protestant  Chillingworth  did,  when 
he  wrote  beneath  his  subscription  in  the  parish 
registry  that  he  signed  them  as  the  bonds  of 
peace.  And  with  all  the  associations  of  art, 
of  purity,  of  prayer,  and  holy  devotion  of  the 
saints,  gathered  around  that  name,  the  Virgin 
Mary,  his  would  be  a  reckless  iconoclastic  hand 
who  would  strike  it  from  the  Christian's  com- 
mon creed. 

Natural  theology,  however,  is  directly  con- 
cerned with  the  significance  of  the  advent  of 
Jesus  as  a  historical  fact.  Considered  in  this 
light,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  tradition  of 
the  virgin  birth  is  neither  capable  in  itself  of 
historical  proof,  nor  would  it,  if  provable,  by 
itself  alone  prove  anything  of  indispensable 
value  to  faith  in  the  spiritual  origin  of  all  life, 


84  CONSTRUCTIVE 

or  in  the  Incarnation.  It  might,  on  the  con- 
trary, add  an  exceptionable  difficulty  to  the 
belief  that  Jesus'  human  heredity  was  such 
as  ours.  Whether,  indeed,  before  ever  his  mem- 
bers were  fashioned,  as  afterward  at  his  bap- 
tism, there  may  have  been  an  unusual  descent 
of  the  Spirit,  an  influx  of  spiritual  power  which 
is  beyond  our  apprehension,  but  not  beyond 
the  capacity  of  nature  to  receive — this  is  mat- 
ter for  speculative  religious  thought.  But  if 
he  is  indeed  the  Christ,  whose  coming  inter- 
prets nature  and  history,  and  by  whom  the 
thoughts  of  men's  hearts  are  revealed,  then  he 
must  have  been  a  man  like  us;  he  could  not 
have  been  the  man  he  was  unless  he  had  en- 
tered into  the  full  inheritance  of  our  human 
nature.  And  surely  the  life  of  Jesus  showed 
the  union  and  the  perfection  of  both  the  manly 
and  the  womanly  of  his  heredity  from  a  line 
of  kings  and  from  the  mother  who  was  blessed 
among  women;  for,  in  his  personal  authority 
and  in  his  wondrous  personal  attractiveness, 
he  led  strong  men  to  leave  all  and  follow  him, 
and  drew  the  little  child  from  the  midst  of 
them  to  come  to  him. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  85 

His  disciples  tell  us  nothing  of  the  Master's 
appearance,  as  we  would  like  to  know  how  he 
looked,  what  light  was  in  his  eye,  what  power 
in  his  presence,  when  he  spake  some  of  those 
words  which,  once  spoken,  have  never  since 
been  forgotten.  But  from  some  minor  indi- 
cations of  his  personal  impression  upon  men, 
as  well  as  from  what  is  narrated  of  the  works, 
taxing  human  endurance,  which  he  did  day 
after  day,  we  may  infer  something  concerning 
his  perfect  physiological  preparation,  the  con- 
summate organization  in  him  of  body  and  mind, 
for  the  exercise  of  sustained  spiritual  energy, 
for  the  going  forth  to  others  of  the  virtue  that 
was  in  him.  The  disciples,  said  Peter,  followed 
no  cunningly  devised  fables  when  they  made 
known  his  power  and  his  presence.  His  min- 
istry of  healing  also — a  subject  which  I  will  not 
now  venture  to  discuss — may  bear  witness  in 
the  light  of  further  psychical  knowledge  of  the 
natural  to  the  renewing  virtue  of  the  Spirit 
when  raised  to  its  highest  power  in  a  perfect 
personality. 

Furthermore,  in  order  that  we  may  behold 
Jesus  as  he  is  in  the  midst  of  natural  forces  and 


86  CONSTRUCTIVE 

laws,  we  shall  need  to  study  his  life  in  relation 
to  whatever  historical  criticism  may  enable  us 
to  know  of  his  immediate  environment.  In 
this  sense  biblical  criticism,  though  not  an  exact 
science,  may  rightly  claim  a  place  among  the 
sciences.  Natural  theology  must  avail  itself 
of  these  studies  likewise  in  its  final  effort  to 
discover  the  meaning  of  personal  life  in  its 
highest  realization  in  the  self-consciousness  of 
the  Christ.  Sooner  or  later,  to  this  ultimate 
issue  all  our  knowledges  must  come  out: 
How  are  we  to  apprehend  ourselves  in  Christ? 
What  is  the  personal  value  as  it  is  realized  in 
the  ideal  personality  of  Christ?  Our  interest 
at  this  point,  however,  is  not  theological  but 
epistemological;  for  no  theory  of  knowledge 
can  be  complete  unless  it  shall  apprehend  the 
knowledge  of  self,  even  as  we  are  apprehended 
in  Christ.  So  far  as  our  consciousness  has 
entered  into  his,  and  his  has  filled  ours  to  the 
full,  will  our  theory  of  knowing  be  true  to  the 
whole  truth  concerning  the  nature  of  knowl- 
edge. 

Moreover,  in   such  endeavor  to  know  our- 
selves as  we  are  known  in  Christ,  and  to  esti- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  87 

mate  the  value  of  personal  life  in  Jesus'  con- 
sciousness of  its  worth,  we  can  not  separate  the 
Christ  of  history  from  the  Christ  of  experience. 
It  is  not  true  to  the  manifestation  of  the  Spirit 
which  is  given  in  him,  when  we  put  the  ques- 
tion— Jesus  or  Christ?  For  the  historical  Jesus 
is  the  potential  Christ  of  history.  Jesus  is  him- 
self the  creator  of  the  ideal  Christ.  We  mis- 
take no  illusive  feeling  of  our  hearts  for  spir- 
itual reality;  we  lay  hold  of  a  law  of  personal 
energy  as  unbroken  as  the  law  of  conservation 
of  energy  in  nature,  when  we  hold  it  to  be  true 
that  Jesus  Christ  in  his  life  on  earth  must  have 
been,  and  was  potentially  in  his  person,  all  that 
he  has  become  kinetically,  and  is,  and  shall 
continue  to  be  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Scien- 
tifically stripped  of  the  legendary,  contemplated 
in  the  cold  light  of  searching  historical  criti- 
cism, or  discovered,  as  nothing  else  finds  us,  in 
the  immediate  response  of  our  life  to  his,  the 
personal  influence  of  Jesus  abides  always  with 
us;  the  Christ  is  to-day  as  always  the  spir- 
itual dynamic  of  the  world.  If,  then,  our  pre- 
vious studies  of  genetic  psychology  shall  have 
left  us  with  the  conviction  that  the  evolution 


88  CONSTRUCTIVE 

of  intelligence  has  not  been  itself  an  unintelli- 
gent process;  that  nature  has  come  to  itself 
as  spirit  in  the  free  personal  selfhood  of  which 
we  have  entered  into  possession — then  this  spir- 
itual meaning  of  our  being  will  come  to  its 
final  and  full  assurance  in  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness of  life.  Jesus'  transcendent  personal- 
ity raises  above  a  merely  materialistic  estimate 
the  worth  of  human  personality.  Biblical  crit- 
icism leaves  the  Christ  as  the  original  source  of 
the  disciples'  faith,  the  ever-present  vitality  of 
his  church,  and  the  revelation  of  the  spiritual 
worth  of  man,  even  as  the  glory  which  he  had 
received  from  the  Father. 

Let  us  glance  briefly  at  two  significant  as- 
pects of  Jesus'  life,  still  beholding  him  as  he 
stands  in  his  luminous  personality  against  the 
background  of  nature. 

First,  it  is  to  be  said  that  the  mind  that  was 
in  Jesus  reveals  in  its  transcendence  the  ide- 
ational energy  immanent  in  personal  being. 
That  which  psychology  has  to  account  for  is 
not  merely  ideas,  but  the  power  to  have  ideas. 
Thinking  is  an  act;  it  is  energizing.  This 
thinking  energy,  among  all  the  other  forms  of 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  89 

energy,  is  the  primary  fact  of  mind  in  nature; 
here,  likewise,  as  in  the  supposed  cosmic  ether, 
it  is  the  motion,  the  energizing,  that  mere  mech- 
anistic conceptions  leave  out  of  the  account. 
The  spiritual  energy  of  the  mind  that  was  in 
Jesus  reaches  through  the  generations,  and  of 
the  increase  of  its  dominion  there  is  no  end. 
It  is  natural,  yet  it  is  supernal.  It  is  human 
thinking,  yet  spiritual  beyond  measure.  His 
thought  is  the  energy  of  mind  raised  to  its 
superlative. 

The  spiritual  energy  of  mind,  which  scientific 
psychology  has  to  apprehend  as  a  fact  of  na- 
ture, is  manifested  at  its  height  in  the  method 
of  Jesus'  thinking,  and  by  its  stupendous  power 
in  creating  the  Christian  consciousness  of  life. 
Nature  in  her  fields  and  flowers  gave  to  Jesus, 
as  to  other  men,  materials  for  parables,  but  in 
his  thinking  at  once  they  took  form  and  be- 
came parables  of  the  Spirit.  There  is  in  his 
teaching  a  penetration  of  intuition,  a  clearness 
of  vision,  a  spontaneity  of  expression,  an  im- 
mediate sense  of  reality,  which  have  made  him 
the  spiritual  authority  of  the  world.  From  the 
infinite  deeps  of  his  God-consciousness  truths 


9o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

shine  out  above  all  controversy  supernal  as  the 
stars. 

If,  indeed,  as  we  have  followed  the  sciences 
through  the  way  of  nature  up  to  man  we  had 
observed  no  indications  of  meaning  to  lead  us 
on;  if  we  had  discerned  no  signs  of  intelligent 
direction  pointing  toward  some  spiritual  su- 
premacy; and  then  if  suddenly  we  had  come 
out  before  Jesus  Christ;  if  thus  unheralded  and 
unexpected  Jesus  himself  had  appeared  amid  all 
the  unintelligibleness  of  an  aimless  world;  then 
would  he  be  a  miracle  contrary  to  experience, 
and  his  God-consciousness  seem  an  incredible 
revelation.  Such  instantaneous  flaming  forth 
in  a  mindless  nature  of  the  mind  that  is  in 
Jesus  might  be  a  surprise  beyond  all  under- 
standing, a  marvel  of  mind  so  supernatural 
that  it  would  not  have  left  the  natural  uncon- 
sumed.  But  our  Christ  did  not  so  come,  and 
his  divineness  does  not  consume  his  natural- 
ness. Jesus,  thinking  his  thought  of  God,  nay 
rather  Jesus  thinking  his  thought  with  God,  is 
come  to  fulfil  all  the  law  and  the  prophets  that 
have  been  before  him  since  the  beginning  of 
the  world.     To  this  day  his  mighty  working  is 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  91 

not  all  told  in  what  men  of  old  bear  witness 
that  he  began  to  do  at  Cana  of  Galilee.  Hover- 
ing above  our  city,  his  thought  of  it,  for  such  as 
have  eyes  to  see,  over  all  our  wronged  and 
troubled  earth,  is  his  vision  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  He  has  made  that  real  for  us.  His 
spiritual  achievement  is  the  prayer  which  he 
taught  the  world  to  pray,  Thy  kingdom  come. 
The  power  which  was  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  to 
behold  Satan  fallen  from  heaven  when  his  dis- 
ciples told  him  of  a  few  slight  successes  in  his 
name,  his  power  to  behold  the  hereafter  as  God 
in  heaven  knows  the  eternal  realities,  the  light 
within  him  of  the  new  heavens  and  the  new 
earth;  this  is  the  final  and  supreme  achievement 
of  the  Spirit  which  is  in  man.  To  him  it  was 
given  without  the  measure  which  our  little 
sciences  can  measure.  The  Lord's  prayer  is 
itself  a  deed  done,  a  mighty  work  accom- 
plished. When  he  taught  his  disciples  to  pray, 
Thy  kingdom  come,  Thy  will  be  done,  an  act 
of  spiritual  power  was  achieved,  a  dynamic  of 
ceaseless  energy  entered  into  human  history 
by  the  word  of  a  man  made  in  the  likeness  of 
God.     When   his   disciples   continue   repeating 


92  CONSTRUCTIVE 

his  act  of  prayer,  and  feel  its  quickening  power, 
they  live  in  his  life  and  see  in  his  light. 

The  other  aspect  of  Jesus'  final  interpretation 
of  personal  life  is  to  be  observed  in  the  power 
of  his  will  to  live — the  potential  energy  in  him 
to  live  his  Godlike  life  among  men. 

All  that  we  know  of  the  meaning  of  that 
word  energy  in  outward  nature  is  derived  from 
its  meaning  to  us  in  our  conscious  willing.  The 
idealist  has  here  the  last  word  to  speak  to  the 
physicist,  as  he  affirms  that  the  will  to  be  as 
an  individual  is  the  ultimate  unanalyzable 
actuality  of  existence.  There  is  nothing  given 
in  experience  more  fundamental,  more  creative, 
more  constant  than  the  personal  will  to  be.  It 
is  not  separable  from  thinking;  only  in  reflec- 
tions, not  in  the  act  of  reflecting,  can  the  will  be 
isolated  as  an  object  of  consciousness.  It  is  per- 
vasive and  active  throughout  our  knowing  our- 
selves and  our  world.  This  will  of  man  to  be, 
this  energy  of  the  personal  will  to  live,  is  made 
manifest  in  its  immortal  potentiality  in  the 
will  of  Jesus  to  live  as  the  Son  of  God.  By  it 
he  overcame  the  world.  And  the  unconquer- 
able force  of  the  Christ-will  to  live  has  become 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  93 

the  victory  over  death  in  the  consciousness  of 
generations  of  men,  who  in  joy  of  sacrificial  de- 
votion and  in  serene  assurance  of  the  power  of 
an  endless  life  have  willed  to  lay  down  their 
lives  and  to  take  them  up  again  with  the  Christ. 
Death  itself,  in  Jesus'  knowledge  of  it,  was  a 
part,  a  moment,  an  act  of  his  living;  dying 
was  living  into  new  life,  not  a  hopeless  defeat 
suffered,  but  an  action  and  a  victory  achieved. 
To  die  is  not  merely  something  to  be  suffered; 
it  is  an  act  to  be  accomplished.  So  death  in 
the  Christian  consciousness  of  dying  has  some- 
times seemed  to  be,  as  we  may  hope  some  day 
to  experience  it  to  be,  not  a  mere  passive  pass- 
ing, a  suffering  endured,  but  an  act  of  passing 
into  life  beyond  life, — at  the  last  an  access  of 
spiritual  strength  never  so  realized  until  then, 
a  conservation  of  happiest  memories  in  a  hap- 
pier beginning  of  life's  completions,  a  sense  and 
vision  of  divine  reality  brightening  into  knowl- 
edge— even  as  for  some  whom  we  may  have  lost 
from  sight  for  a  little  while  the  veil  seemed  to 
have  been  lifted  as  they  passed  into  the  invis- 
ible Presence  in  which  we  unseeing,  and  they 
henceforth  beholding,  live:  as  the  perfect  Man 


94  CONSTRUCTIVE 

knew  full  well  that  his  God  and  ours  is  not  the 
God  of  the  dead  but  of  the  living,  and  his  dis- 
ciples, having  once  known  him,  were  henceforth 
well  assured  that  whether  we  wake  or  sleep 
we  live  together  with  him. 

It  would  require  a  long  chapter  and  a  crit- 
ical study  of  biology  and  genetic  psychology 
to  gather  the  materials  and  appraise  the  evi- 
dential value  of  the  argument  for  immortal- 
ity from  the  progressive  evolution  of  nature 
and  personality  up  to  the  Christ-consciousness 
of  man.  This,  likewise,  is  part  of  the  work  of 
natural  theology  waiting  to  be  done.  Enough 
now  to  point  only,  as  I  am  doing,  to  the  unmis- 
takable sign  of  the  meaning  of  personality  in  a 
realm  of  ends  which  is  lifted  up  in  the  will  of 
the  Christ  to  live  the  eternal  kind  of  life.  That 
personal  will,  as  it  was  manifested  in  superla- 
tive power  in  him,  and  as  it  works  mightily  in 
the  Christian  consciousness  of  life,  is  not  a 
mere  ideal  creation,  a  speculation,  a  fond  human 
hope;  it  is  a  fact,  a  fact  among  other  facts  of 
nature,  as  really  so  as  any  magnitude  to  be 
measured  in  the  laboratory;  the  science  of  evo- 
lution is  incomplete  should  it  fail  to  recognize 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  95 

the  Christ-fact  as  reality  to  be  accounted  for 
in  a  final  natural  philosophy.  And  at  the  end 
of  all  knowledge,  the  last  sign  of  meaning 
pointing  still  on  in  the  same  direction  into  the 
unknown  is — Immortality. 

In  the  presence  of  the  consummate  Man  we 
ask  again  the  same  question  with  which  we 
began,  What  is  the  worth  of  a  man's  life?  We 
ask  of  the  Christian  consciousness,  of  which 
he  is  the  creator  and  the  light,  What  is  the  full 
significance  of  the  world?  Does  nature  have 
any  discernible  meaning?  Is  the  nature  that 
we  see  a  palimpsest,  written  over  with  our  ideas, 
but  when  stripped  one  after  another  of  our  im- 
pressions in  itself  a  blank,  whereon  is  nothing 
of  meaning,  no  line  of  reason,  nor  word  of  the 
eternal?  Or  is  it  a  scripture  which  we  may 
read  in  part,  discovering  on  its  unfolding  pages 
thought  answering  to  our  thought,  and  seem- 
ingly some  far  intent,  running  through  its  suc- 
cessive chapters,  and  waiting  still  to  come  to 
its  conclusion  ?  Has  all  this  fair  world  we  love 
no  secret  of  divinity  at  its  heart?  Is  every 
expression  of  the  Spirit  that  prophet  and  poet 


96  CONSTRUCTIVE 

see  passing  over  the  face  of  nature  but  illusive 
reflection  of  their  thought;  or  can  it  indeed  be 
their  finer  discernment  of  some  indwelling  Pres- 
ence, which  would  reveal  itself  to  those  who 
have  hearts  pure  enough  to  see?  So  one  may 
put  the  ultimate  question  of  reason  and  of 
faith. 

Go  back,  then,  once  more  with  our  question 
of  the  sign  to  the  beginning — as  far  back  to- 
ward the  origin  of  things  as  the  most  adventu- 
rous science  may  go;  then  look  to  the  end — as 
far  toward  the  end  as  the  vision  of  the  trans- 
figured man,  the  ascended  Christ,  may  suffer 
the  most  worshipful  faith  to  gaze  into  the 
heavenlies.  The  way  of  the  aeons  between 
let  science  measure  as  it  may — the  materials, 
the  powers,  the  mechanics  of  it  from  age  to 
age;  but  the  beginnings  and  the  end,  the  origin 
lost  from  sight  far  away,  and  the  glory  at  the 
end  vanishing  into  the  ineffable — of  these  what 
science  can  tell?  Put  the  beginning  in  closest 
contrast  with  the  end;  that  star-dust  concentra- 
ted in  our  sun,  that  mind-dust,  as  Professor 
Clifford  was  wont  to  call  the  earliest  gleams 
of  intelligence  in  nature,  in  contrast  with  the 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  97 

final   luminous    Christ-consciousness   of  God; 
put  that  least  living  cell  in  its  vast  potential- 
ity beneath   the  eye  of  the  mind   that  knows 
it  in  its  very  place  in  a  living  order;  nay,  put 
that  cell  in  its  unconscious  prophecy  of  futu- 
rity beneath  the  eye  of  the  Christ  who  knows 
that  nothing  falls  to  the  ground  without  the 
Father's  notice;   consider  the  way  of  life,  what 
it  means,  from  it  to  him,  to  him  in  his  con- 
sciousness of  the  mystery  of  the  Godhead — the 
distance  passed,  the  end  attained — the  mystery 
of  divine  personality  revealed — the  life  mani- 
fested in  the  fellowship  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son,  for  in  reality  our  fellowship  is  with  him. 
Our  God  is  one  God;   nature  is  one  revelation 
of  the  Spirit;    we  are  made  partakers  of  the 
divine  nature.     In  the  beginning  was  the  Word, 
and  the  Word  was  with  God   and  was  God. 
We  have  seen  his  glory,  glory  as  of  the  only 
begotten  of  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth. 
Such  the  new  natural  theology  may  find  to  be 
the  world-view,  which   science  leaves  open  to 
faith,  but  itself  may  not  enter.     Yet  there  is 
a  spirituality  of  the  scientific  mind,  of  which  I 
shall  have  somewhat  to  say  in  the  next  lecture. 


IV 

SCIENTIFIC  SPIRITUALITY 

ENTER  a  laboratory  and  stand  by  a  win- 
dow, while  a  man  of  science  at  his  table  is 
conducting  some  research.  He  can  not  allow 
himself  to  look  out  of  the  window  and  let  his 
mind  wander  far  and  away;  his  eye  must  be 
fixed  on  his  instrument  of  precision  by  means 
of  which  he  would  measure  a  wave-length,  de- 
fine a  microscopic  object,  or  catch  what  he  can 
find  in  a  vacuum  tube.  Any  theological  obser- 
vation of  mine  would  be  an  interference  with 
his  work  as  a  nature-searcher.  And  when  he 
has  finished  and  made  careful  note  of  his  ob- 
servation, he  has  with  the  same  precision  to 
regard  the  fact  he  has  observed  in  its  connec- 
tion with  other  facts  previously  discovered,  and 
to  verify  his  observations  by  repeating  them 
and  by  control  experiments;   still  further,  he 

must  think  the  facts  observed  over  and  over  in 

98 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  99 

all  possible  relations,  grouping  them  and  put- 
ting them  together  in  some  unifying  concep- 
tion, that  he  may  thereby  recognize  the  method 
or  law  of  nature  which  their  mutual  behavior 
discloses;  and  then  his  work  begins  again,  for 
he  must  apply  that  mental  conception  to  some 
other  research,  going  back  with  it  to  nature 
once  more,  and  using  the  knowledge  thus  ac- 
quired as  his  working-creed  in  the  reasonable 
hope  that  thereby  he  may  push  human  knowl- 
edge a  little  farther  out  into  the  alluring  vast- 
ness  of  the  unknown.  And  here  again  he  has 
to  exercise  renewed  self-control,  lest  his  work- 
ing-creed becomes  an  obscuring  dogmatism, 
and  his  mind  may  not  see  what  nature  itself 
next  would  open  to  his  understanding.  In  this 
he  affords  to  us  students  of  divine  revelation 
a  most  excellent  example.  This  scientific  work 
and  sustained  mental  attitude  require  rigorous 
intellectual  discipline  and  compel  the  man  of 
science  in  his  working  hours  to  put  all  sen- 
timent or  personal  opinions  behind  him.  He 
might  not  like  to  have  one  of  us  write  over  the 
door  of  his  laboratory  the  words  which  Dante 
saw  written  over  the  Inferno,  "Abandon  hope, 


ioo  CONSTRUCTIVE 

all  ye  who  enter  here";  but  once  in  his  work- 
shop he  himself  as  a  true  man  of  science,  for 
the  sake  of  the  truthfulness  of  his  work,  is  under 
exacting  obligation  to  shut  out  from  his  mind 
the  sentiments,  personal  opinions,  or  beliefs  of 
any  kind  that  might  cast  an  interfering  shadow 
even  over  the  clearness  and  accuracy  of  his 
observation.  Very  naturally,  therefore,  this 
necessary  habit  of  keeping  thought  close  to 
the  fact,  and  of  admitting  nothing  incapable 
of  proof,  may  not  predispose  a  thorough  scien- 
tific man  to  a  confession  of  religious  beliefs, 
although  it  may  cause  him  to  realize  most  pro- 
foundly how  small  is  the  extent  of  the  things 
that  can  be  proved,  and  how  large  is  the  do- 
main that  must  be  possessed  by  faith. 

But  while  the  investigator  is  thus  intent  on 
his  immediate  object  of  research,  I,  who  have 
stolen  into  his  laboratory,  while  watching  him 
in  his  experimentation,  may  glance  out  of  the 
window,  and  into  the  distant  sky,  seeing  there 
nothing  that  has  form  or  substance,  not  so 
much,  perhaps,  as  a  passing  cloud,  only  a  far 
horizon  line  and  a  vacant  expanse  and  depth 
of  blue.     But,  remembering  what  the  worker 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  101 

at  the  table,  and  many  before  him  who  willed 
to  know,  have  taught  me  to  know,  as  I  look 
over  his  shoulder  out  into  space  and  let  the 
thoughts  come  to  me  that  may,  that  vacant 
vista  of  light  suddenly  changes  into  a  scene  of 
fascinating  interest,  a  field  of  intense  activi- 
ties. That  emptiness  of  space  is  peopled  with 
a  heavenly  host  of  radiances  innumerable — 
regiments  and  lines  of  contending  forces  sweep 
across  it;  swift  emissaries  from  all  the  thrones 
of  light  appear  in  those  depths  of  blue;  poten- 
tates, principalities,  dominions  of  solar  sys- 
tems, the  great  world-powers  surrounding  this 
little  earth,  are  met  to  make  for  us  God's  peace 
in  the  quiet  of  that  evening  sky.  What  does  the 
man  of  science  at  the  work-bench  care  for  that? 
Nothing,  perhaps,  just  at  that  moment;  he  is 
using  his  imagination  to  enable  him  to  see  a 
little  farther  into  the  wonder  of  the  thing  be- 
fore his  eye;  I  was  simply  letting  my  imagina- 
tion, as  we  all  at  times  must  do,  render  more 
real  to  me  the  realities  of  the  deep  things  of 
God  that  no  eye  can  see.  It  is  the  same  power 
of  imagination,  the  same  power  of  mind  over 
nature  in  both  of  us;  exercised  in  either  way, 


102  CONSTRUCTIVE 

it  has  the  same  right  and  reason  to  lead  us  on, 
and  out,  and  up  in  the  love  and  the  pursuit  of 
truth. 

The  day  passes;  the  scientist  and  I  walk 
homeward  together.  Unconsciously,  uncon- 
fessedly,  we  both  may  have  learned  in  differ- 
ent ways  much  the  same  lesson,  he  intent  on 
his  labor,  I  gazing  idly  out  of  the  window; 
for  neither  of  us  by  searching  has  found  out 
the  Almighty,  and  he  very  likely,  as  he  closes 
his  laboratory  door,  leaving  there  his  work  un- 
finished, may  have  realized  more  deeply  than 
I  how  God's  ways  are  past  finding  out.  To 
each  of  us  another  lesson,  deeper,  more  human, 
diviner,  may  have  come  unsought  on  our  home- 
ward way;  and  to  him  perhaps  most  needful, 
as  his  little  child  runs  out  to  meet  him  and  he 
enters  the  door  of  his  home — the  lesson  of  God 
which  Saint  John  had  learned  from  his  Christ: 
"We  love  because  He  first  loved  us." 

There  is  a  scientific  type  of  spiritual-minded- 
ness;  and  of  its  worth  and  use  some  things 
may  fittingly  be  said  in  this  school  of  religion. 

It  is  to  be  recognized  as  a  definite  variety  of 
spirituality  that  has  been  formed  in  the  envi- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  103 

ronment  of  Christianity.  Consciously  or  un- 
consciously it  has  grown  and  bears  its  fruit 
under  the  influence  and  in  the  light  of  the 
Christ.  This  spiritual  type  has  its  Christian 
heredity,  determinant  of  its  character,  which 
it  may  modify  in  its  individuality,  but  from 
the  formative  influence  of  which  it  may  no 
more  escape  than  any  transmission  of  life  may 
from  the  Mendelian  law  of  dominant  char- 
acters. It  is,  then,  with  the  scientific  spiritual- 
ity that  draws  the  breath  of  its  life  in  the  at- 
mosphere of  religious  idealism  and  develops  in 
the  environment  of  Hebrew-Christian  faiths, 
that  we  have  to  do. 

It  is  to  be  differentiated  from  several  well- 
known  forms  of  religious  experience. 

It  is  to  be  distinguished  from  that  kind  of 
spiritual  apprehension  which  in  general  may 
be  designated  as  mystical.  It  is  not  character- 
ized by  immediate  mystical  vision.  The  scien- 
tific mind  night  after  night  will  search  the 
heavens  with  the  telescope;  but  it  could  not 
keep  the  saint's  lonely  vigil  until  the  narrow 
cell  should  be  flooded  with  ineffable  light. 

Neither  does   this   kind  of  spirituality  wear 


104  CONSTRUCTIVE 

the  sign  of  mystical  pietism.  It  waits  not 
with  Tauler  on  God;  nor  with  Madame  Guion 
in  the  still  hour  is  it  lost  in  contemplation  of 
the  divine.  It  would  not  for  a  moment  allow 
its  mental  energies  to  run  to  waste  in  the  placid 
diffuseness  of  the  so-called  "new  thought"  liter- 
ature of  our  time.  The  scientific  mind  is  an 
active  intelligence,  every  morning  ofF  on  the 
hunt,  keenly  observant  that  no  least  sign  may 
escape  it,  and  careful  to  prevent  its  compass 
from  being  deflected  by  any  personal  belong- 
ings. The  scientific  man  can  not  be  expected, 
then,  to  sit  still  under  unscientific  preaching, 
and  to  know  God.  Rather  under  such  preach- 
ing he  might  recall  a  word  of  Pascal — that  pro- 
found thinker  who  at  the  age  of  sixteen  had 
composed  a  little  tractate  on  conic  sections, 
and  at  twenty-six  had  made  brilliant  experi- 
ments in  hydrostatics  and  pneumatics,  and 
who  then  abandoned  a  splendid  career  in  sci- 
ence to  become  a  religious  recluse  and  to  pro- 
duce his  immortal  Provincial  Letters — this  word 
of  Pascal  which  any  of  us  may  well  bear  in  mind 
in  the  preparation  for  our  preaching:  "Our 
whole  dignity  consists,  then,  in  thought.     Our 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  105 

elevation  must  be  derived  from  this,  not  from 
space  and  duration,  which  we  can  not  fill.  Let 
us  endeavor,  then,  to  think  well;  this  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  ethics. "* 

The  scientific  type  of  spirituality  is  to  be  dis- 
tinguished also  from  transcendental  intuition. 
It  numbers  among  its  teachers  neither  Origen 
from  among  the  Neo-Platonists;  nor  Augus- 
tine with  his  glorious  Confessions;  nor  Hegel 
with  his  dialectic  of  the  universe;  nor  Schleier- 
macher  in  his  feeling  of  absolute  dependence; 
neither  does  it  cultivate  the  transcendentalism 
of  Emerson,  which,  like  some  rare  exotic  plant 
in  a  conservatory  of  light  and  warmth,  man- 
aged to  blossom  amid  the  clear,  cold  analytic 
of  our  orthodox  New  England  climate. 

It  may  have  more  affinity  for  the  vital  in- 
sight, the  intuition  given  in  the  very  act  of 
living,  of  which  Bergson  is  now  the  philosophic 
knight  errant,  with  lance  in  rest  against  all 
opponents.  In  its  own  way,  within  its  proper 
field  of  observation,  the  scientific  mind  has 
learned  the  value  of  insight  as  well  as  of  im- 
agination; for  to  swift  intuitions,  to  daring  im- 
1  Ch.  11,  x. 


106  CONSTRUCTIVE 

aginations,  science  owes  some  of  its  most  brill- 
iant discoveries  and  its  best-attested  utilities. 
In  this  way  of  discovery  also  it  has  gained  its 
own  reverent  sense  of  the  Unknown  One.  As 
the  man  of  science  beholds  in  a  glass  darkly 
the  infinite  mystery  of  the  universe,  none  may 
understand  more  religiously  than  he  this  re- 
covered saying  of  our  Lord,  if,  indeed,  this 
saying  is  a  genuine  reminiscence  of  the  great 
Teacher  who  once  walked  through  the  fields 
with  his  disciples,  and  who  had  not  where  to  lay 
his  head  save  under  the  starry  Syrian  sky:  "He 
that  wonders  shall  reign,  and  he  that  reigns 
shall  rest."  Even  this,  the  wonder,  the  reign, 
and  then  the  rest  of  mind,  may  characterize 
scientific  spirituality. 

One  mark  of  its  spiritual  genuineness  is  its 
devotion  to  the  service  of  knowing  truth.  For 
science  is  service,  and  often  a  hard  service. 
Scientific  devotion,  kept  unbroken  until  death, 
is  the  troth  of  a  man's  being  to  God's  truth, 
and  whether  the  man  who  is  loyal  to  it  through 
life  is  conscious  of  it  or  not,  this  lifelong  will 
to  know  is  itself  one  of  the  spiritual  powers 
and  a  witness  of  the  Spirit  in  man.     It  is  a 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  107 

will  that  might  urge  archangel  on  farthest  flight 
to  uttermost  omnipresence  of  God  in  the 
heavens,  eager  and  ever  rejoicing  to  know  the 
divine  order  and  reason  of  the  creation.  Here 
among  the  crucibles  and  mechanisms  of  the 
laboratories,  shut  within  the  limits  of  these 
bodily  senses  and  compelled  to  work  only  with 
quantities  that  can  be  weighed  and  measured, 
nevertheless  the  scientific  mind  bears  the  sign 
of  the  spiritual  nobility  of  human  nature,  and 
witnesses  its  spiritual  lordship  as  throughout 
the  patient  years  of  research  it  succeeds  in 
bringing  one  thing  after  another  into  subjec- 
tion to  it. 

But,  you  may  think,  is  not  this  a  sceptic's 
spirit  rather  than  what  we  are  accustomed  to 
regard  as  spiritual-mindedness?  Very  likely; 
but  if  it  be  doubt,  it  is  like  Abraham's  doubt 
of  the  worth  of  life  to  him  should  he  spend 
his  days  keeping  his  father's  scattered  sheep; 
a  doubt  which  was  for  him  the  venture  of  a 
great  faith  that  led  him  to  seek  a  better  coun- 
try; scientific  doubt  may  be — I  am  not  saying 
it  always  is,  but  in  its  nobler  aspiration  it 
surely   is — the   doubt  that  goes  forth  to  be  a 


io8  CONSTRUCTIVE 

sojourner  in  a  land  of  promise,  not  knowing 
whither  it  goes,  but  looking  through  all  this 
phenomenal  world  for  the  reality  that  has 
foundations,  whose  maker  and  builder  may  be 
diviner  than  we  know.  I  am  not  speaking  in 
such  language  of  the  vainglorious  doubt  of  the 
intellectual  smart  set;  not  theirs  the  quiet 
hours  of  waiting  for  the  self-revelation  of  na- 
ture; nor  theirs  the  faith  in  reason  and  reality 
of  the  true  scientific  spirit.  I  am  thinking  of 
the  genuine  man  of  science,  of  the  man  who  will 
not  deny  his  own  intellectual  devotion  to  truth 
by  failing  to  keep  a  heart  as  reverent  and  as 
humble  as  that  of  the  simplest  believer  who 
looks  up  with  worshipful  eyes  to  the  Madonna 
and  the  Holy  Child,  or  who  may  receive  the 
sacramental  symbol  of  the  real  presence  of 
God  with  man. 

Still  the  question  may  be  thrown  back, 
But  is  there  not  a  real  difference  between  these 
two  mental  dispositions?  Yes,  of  course,  and 
yet  no.  Differences  there  are  of  aim,  habit, 
method,  mood,  and  also  of  religious  confession; 
But  many  of  our  religious  differences  do  not 
go  down  as  deep  as  one  might  think.     I  have 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  109 

been,  for  example,  at  a  revival  meeting  in  a 
Protestant  church,  and,  seated  in  the  rear  where 
I  might  watch  the  psychology  of  the  crowd,  I 
have  observed  the  effect,  passing  like  a  wave 
over  the  congregation,  of  the  evangelist's  emo- 
tional presentation  of  the  mother  story.  You 
recognize  the  type — the  familiar  story  of  the 
mother  and  the  son — of  the  evangelist's  appeal. 
Then  I  stole  in  mind  from  that  crowded  church 
under  the  spell  of  the  mother  story  to  a  cathe- 
dral chapel,  where  silent  worshippers  on  bended 
knees,  and  some  with  tearful  eyes,  were  offer- 
ing their  devotions  before  the  Madonna  and  the 
Child.  It  was  an  easy  thing  to  transfer  the 
feeling,  the  effect  from  the  one  place  to  the 
other;  in  the  Protestant  church  it  was  a  pic- 
ture in  words  of  the  mother  and  her  child;  in 
the  other  it  was  a  painter's  vision  of  the  Ma- 
donna. But  the  devotion,  the  feeling,  the  spell, 
were  much  the  same.  It  was  the  same  appeal 
of  holy  purity  and  love.  The  differences  that 
keep  us  so  far  apart  in  our  external  attitudes, 
or  our  vain  ecclesiasticisms,  are  not  always 
psychologically  so  real,  so  spiritually  divisive 
as  they  seem.     So  I  would  say  the  scientific 


no  CONSTRUCTIVE 

type  of  spirituality  may  be  more  profoundly 
religious  than  those  who  have  not 'experienced 
it  may  imagine. 

Yes,  but  after  all  it  may  be  said:  Are  you 
not  thus  supposing  a  certain  double-mind- 
edness;  how  can  a  purely  scientific  man  be  a 
religious  believer  without  becoming  a  kind  of 
double  personality?  Certainly  no  ultimate  du- 
alism, no  necessary  conflict,  can  be  admitted 
between  the  natural  man  and  the  spiritual 
man.  No  final  contradiction  can  be  assumed 
between  nature  so  far  as  known  and  the  uni- 
verse that  is  to  be  known.  How,  then,  may 
the  sceptic  and  the  mystic  exist  together  in  the 
same  honest  mind?  A  sufficient  answer  would 
be  that  they  often  do.  But  if  one  speaks  this 
moment  as  a  scientist  and  another  moment  as 
a  religionist,  does  he  not  contradict  himself? 
Yes,  as  life  is  often  caught  contradicting  itself, 
that  it  may  the  better  find  its  own  underlying 
unities.  A  closer  introspective  view  may  re- 
veal the  fundamental  integrity  of  his  being. 
The  scientific  determinant  and  the  spiritual 
determinant,  to  speak  in  biological  terms,  do 
coexist  and  cowork  in  one's  thinking  and  liv- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  in 

ing,  however  they  may  be  dissected  in  our  anal- 
ysis of  the  contents  of  consciousness.  To  cut 
out  either  from  our  living  would  be  to  render 
oneself  less  than  a  man.  It  is  also  true  that 
either  one  of  these  factors,  the  sceptical  or  the 
mystical,  may  be  the  dominant  and  the  other 
the  recessive  factor  in  one's  natural  heredity. 
But  these  and  other  elements  of  our  nature,  or 
phases  of  our  development,  are  not  necessarily 
vital  incompatibles.  In  different  blends  they 
appear  and  reappear  in  our  individualities. 
Man  is  born  to  live  both  as  a  sceptical  inquirer 
and  as  a  spiritual  believer;  he  impairs  his  in- 
heritance, he  trifles  with  the  rich  complexity 
of  his  nature,  if  he  fails  to  recognize  and  make 
increase  of  himself  through  both.  To  reconcile 
ourselves  to  ourselves  may  often  prove  a  hard 
task;  but  it  certainly  is  not  to  be  accomplished 
by  destroying  any  elemental  part  of  us;  not 
by  silencing  notes,  but  by  combining  them,  may 
we  "beat  our  music  out."  To  be  true  alike  to 
the  natural  and  the  spiritual  is  to  keep  to  the 
end  our  personal  integrity;  nothing  less  is  per- 
fect simplicity. 

There  may  linger  in   some   minds  this  sus- 


ii2  CONSTRUCTIVE 

picion  concerning  what  has  just  been  said. 
Grant,  they  may  think,  that  a  scientific  man 
need  not  necessarily  become  a  denatured  man 
fit  only  for  laboratory  purposes,  but  not  so 
well  for  human  uses;  nevertheless,  must  it  not 
be  admitted  that  the  prevailing  temper  and 
usual  result  of  scientific  studies  have  not  been 
to  render  men  distinctively  religious;  should 
those  studies  therefore  be  admitted  with  such 
simple  confidence  as  you  suggest  into  the  cur- 
riculum of  a  theological  seminary  ?  Should  such 
questions  be  dropped  by  professors  into  the 
note-books  from  which  youthful  preachers  must 
draw  materials  for  their  sermons? 

To  a  considerable  extent,  it  must  be  allowed, 
the  scientific  temper  has  not  been  confessedly 
religious,  and  in  some  instances  it  has  had  a 
despiritualizing  influence.  Yet  for  much  op- 
position of  science  the  hostility  of  the  church 
must  bear  its  full  share  of  responsibility.  When 
theological  dogmatisms  put  scientific  positiv- 
ism on  the  defensive,  there  were  hard  blows  to 
be  received  as  well  as  given.  But  since  biblical 
and  historical  scholarship  has  recognized  in  the 
method  of  science  its  ally,  all  that  has  been 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  113 

changed.  The  conflict  between  religion  and 
science  is  at  an  end,  at  least  among  men  of 
good  will  and  a  liberal  education.  Much  of 
the  pseudo-science  of  the  sensational  magazines 
is  indeed  destructive  of  spiritual  faiths;  but 
that  is  as  unscientific  as  it  is  irreligious.  Nor  is 
there  necessity  of  spiritual  atrophy  as  a  conse- 
quence of  scientific  pursuits.  Grant  that  La- 
place, speaking  as  a  mathematician,  was  right 
when,  in  searching  the  heavens,  he  said  he  had 
no  need  of  the  hypothesis  of  a  God;  but  Kep- 
ler was  not  wrong,  nor  did  he  cease  to  be 
one  of  the  first  among  astronomers,  when,  hav- 
ing discovered  the  laws  of  planetary  motions, 
he  exclaimed,  "I  think  God's  thoughts  after 
him."  Nor  was  Clerk  Maxwell's  great  work  in 
magnetism  in  conflict  with  his  spirituality  when 
he  said,  "I  have  looked  into  most  philosoph- 
ical systems,  and  I  have  seen  that  none  will 
work  without  a  God."  1  And,  to  quote  but 
one  of  many  other  witnesses  to  a  scientific 
spirituality,  Sir  E.  Ray  Lancaster,  in  a  presi- 
dential address  to  the  British  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science,  reminded  them 
*  "Life,"  p.  426. 


ii4  CONSTRUCTIVE 

that  the  association  had  its  birthplace  under 
the  walls  of  York  Minster,  and,  quoting  these 
words  of  Archbishop  Creighton,  "Religion 
means  the  knowledge  of  our  destiny  and  of 
the  means  of  fulfilling  it,"  he  added:  "We  can 
say  no  more  and  no  less  of  science.  Men  of 
science  seek  in  all  reverence  to  discover  the 
Almighty,  the  Everlasting.  They  claim  sym- 
pathy and  friendship  with  those  who,  like 
themselves,  have  turned  away  from  the  more 
material  struggles  of  human  life  and  have  set 
their  hearts  and  minds  on  the  knowledge  of 
the  eternal."1 

Scientific  spirituality,  then,  is  to  be  esteemed 
as  genuine,  although  it  may  not  always  be  a 
dominant  character  or  may  have  but  slight 
confession  to  offer  of  positive  beliefs.  For  such 
recognition  of  it  among  the  prophets  of  the  un- 
seen and  the  ideal,  the  saying  of  the  Master  is 
sufficient:  "He  that  is  not  against  us  is  for  us." 

It  remains  for  me  to  suggest  some  ways  in 
which  just  this  type  of  spirituality  may  have 
its  place  and  service  among  other  recognized 
varieties  of  religious  experience 

1  Brit.  Assoc.  Reports,  1906,  p.  42. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  115 

First  of  all,  it  is  to  be  said  that  it  is  well  fitted 
to  survive  amid  modern  conditions  of  life  and 
thought.  It  is  at  once  the  heir  of  philosophic 
doubt  and  a  forerunner  of  coming  knowledge 
of  the  highest  power  in  evolution.  It  shall  aid 
us  to  take  thoughtful  heed  of  the  word  of  the 
prophet  of  old  who  would  have  Israel  know  the 
way  of  the  Lord  through  their  history:  "See  it," 
he  cried,  "see  it  as  a  whole."  Knowledge  of 
the  oneness  of  the  whole  creation  is  not  far 
from  faith  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 

Scientific  spirituality  shall  thus  come  to  our 
aid  when  at  times  in  the  brokenness  of  our  hu- 
man experiences  we  shall  have  most  need  to 
regain  a  unifying  sense  of  life — the  uplifting  and 
serene  sense  of  life  as  a  whole  and  of  our  per- 
sonal part  and  worth  in  the  universal  good — 
the  religious  sense  of  our  belonging  to  God's 
thought  and  purpose  that  includes  us  as  parts 
of  its  greatness;  such  as  was  Jesus'  conscious- 
ness of  his  personal  life  when  he  said  these  two 
words  as  though  they  were  but  one:  "My 
Father  is  greater  than  I,"  and,  "I  and  my 
Father  are  one."  To  this  end  the  natural  sci- 
ences shall  bring  their  evidence  of  the  signif- 


u6  CONSTRUCTIVE 

icance  even  of  that  which  seems  least  on  this 
little  earth  amid  the  vast  significance  of  the 
whole  order  of  the  heavens.  Thus  the  man 
scientifically  trained  may  believe  and  disbe- 
lieve and  yet  believe  again,  may  doubt  and 
yet  inquire  again,  as  always  in  the  presence  of 
one  reality,  transcending  finite  thought,  yet 
known  in  part.  He  may  impart  to  us  his 
restful,  deeper  consciousness  of  the  oneness  of 
himself  with  all  selfhood,  of  his  nature  with  all 
nature,  of  his  reason  with  the  universal  reason, 
of  his  spirit  with  the  spirit  that  moves  the 
worlds. 

Furthermore,  this  kind  of  spiritual-minded- 
ness  proves  useful  in  preventing  other  types 
of  religious  experience  from  falling  into  par- 
tialness  and  exclusiveness  to  their  own  hurt. 
It  will  serve  to  check  on  the  one  side  a  perilous 
tendency  to  overbelief,  and  on  the  other  a  pre- 
cipitous fall  into  unbelief. 

The  variant  forms  of  religious  experience 
need  repeated  readjustments,  mutual  balan- 
cings, and  reactions  for  the  perfecting  of  the 
faithful.  Mysticism,  left  unchecked,  becomes 
a  self-consuming  flame;  pietism,  overstrained, 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  117 

relapses  into  religious  limpness;  emotional  re- 
vivalism is  sometimes  in  peril  of  losing  moral 
virility.  There  are  not  unknown  among  our 
churches  characters  that  resemble  the  inert 
atoms  which  physicists  tell  us  are  left  as  re- 
sultants of  electrolysis;  once  intensely  vibra- 
ting in  the  electric  field,  then  settling  on  the 
cathode  pole,  they  have  lost  their  electric 
charge  and  become  dead  atoms;  so  spiritual 
emotionalism  may  end  in  religious  inertia. 

Intellectualism  likewise  in  religion  is  too 
prone  to  stiffen  into  devitalized  dogmatisms,  a 
system  of  orthodoxy  to  harden  into  a  crustacean 
rationalism.  Among  these  the  free,  reverent, 
sceptical,  but  truth-seeking  spirit  of  science, 
often  perplexed  but  not  cast  down,  some- 
times persecuted  but  not  destroyed,  has  been 
called  to  its  apostolate.  In  the  earthen  ves- 
sels of  its  perishable  theories  it  has  its  treas- 
ures— its  word  of  the  exceeding  greatness  of 
the  power  of  God  in  nature,  and  the  divers 
ways  of  revelation.  Well  may  the  Church  wel- 
come the  spirit  of  science  among  its  teachers; 
let  those  who  have  no  need  to  feel  its  doubt 
and  who  can  not  enter  into  its  struggle,  know 


u8  CONSTRUCTIVE 

that  it  brings  from  an  older  theophany  than 
Mount  Sinai  its  law,  and  that  it  is  not  the 
least  of  the  prophets  of  the  realm  of  order,  of 
worth,  and  fulfilments  of  all  ideals. 

Another  service  that  science  may  render  to 
spirituality  is  to  impart  to  it  a  simpler  natu- 
ralness. It  leads  religion  out  into  nature  and 
brings  nature  back  into  religion.  It  spiritual- 
izes the  outward  world,  not  as  pure  idealism 
would  do  by  taking  materiality  out  of  it,  but 
by  perceiving  the  material  take  form  and  life 
from  the  spiritual.  It  leaves  us  not  to  wander 
as  shades  of  ourselves  in  a  realm  of  shadows; 
for  us  all  things  working  together  make  reality, 
and  our  individualities  are  not  as  passing  clouds 
catching  an  hour's  sunshine  and  dissolving  into 
the  indistinguishable  absolute.  In  out-of-door 
religion  we  live  and  breathe,  and  are  ourselves 
in  free,  full,  joyous  sense  and  communion  with 
the  life  that  is  in  all  and  over  all.  The  spirit 
of  science  shall  not  take  from  us  the  love  of 
nature,  which  fills  our  modern  poetry  as  with 
the  voice  of  many  waters;  for  day  uttereth 
unto  day  speech  of  nature's  glory  to  our  science, 
and  night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge. 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  119 

Again  science  is  among  us  to  teach  our  the- 
ologies humility.  If  one  were  to  inquire  of  the 
noblest  scientific  investigators,  as  well  as  of  the 
greatest  thinkers  and  seers,  at  what  times  they 
were  most  profoundly  humble,  I  doubt  not 
their  answer  would  be:  at  those  moments  when 
we  were  most  exalted;  when  new  knowledge 
inspired  us  to  fresh  endeavor;  when  reason  had 
led  us  to  the  last  outlook  into  the  infinite  be- 
yond; when  the  mystery  of  truth  inexpressible 
overshadowed  us;  then  were  we  most  humbly 
worshipful.  God  alone  is  great.  In  the  earlier 
years  of  modern  knowledge  Doctor  Chalmers, 
in  one  of  his  famous  astronomical  discourses, 
described  the  "Modesty  of  True  Science." 
Science  may  bring  to  our  theologies  the  lesson 
of  humility  it  has  learned  from  vaster  knowl- 
edge of  the  universe. 

The  scientific  spirit  also  may  teach  anew  the 
religious  lesson  of  unworldliness.  It  is  free  from 
the  vice  of  religion  for  the  sake  of  happiness, 
which  Coleridge  once  stigmatized,  as  did  Her- 
bert Spencer  after  him,  as  other-worldliness. 
Applied  science,  it  is  true,  often  pays  good  divi- 
dends, as  indeed  applied  religion  also  may  do  in 


i2o  CONSTRUCTIVE 

this  present  world.  Pure  science  disinterestedly 
pursued  for  its  own  sake  sometimes  brings  un- 
sought and  unexpected  rewards.  But  lifelong 
devotion  to  a  single  science  is  in  many  instances 
an  unworldly  aim  and  may  become  a  sacrificial 
passion. 

A  broad-minded  Roman  Catholic  theologian 
in  this  country  once  said:  "Property  is  com- 
munion with  God  through  the  material  world." 
Still  more  profoundly  may  it  be  said  of  natural 
science  that  it  is  communion  with  God  through 
the  material  world.  In  unworldiness  of  aim, 
also,  the  scientific  spirit  enters  into  the  power 
of  the  endless  life,  though  it  may  not  be  aware 
of  the  full  reach  of  its  passion  for  intellectual 
achievement.  But  in  love  of  knowledge  it  has 
gained  survival  value.  It  thinks  for  eternity. 
Its  will  to  know  the  truth  can  not  be  satisfied 
with  a  few  years  of  limited  research  in  an  earth- 
ly laboratory.  Pure  science  asserts  against  all 
commercializing  of  education,  it  affirms  above 
all  mere  literary  playing  with  realities,  that  life 
is  worth  living  as  a  noble  venture  for  knowledge. 
In  the  midst  of  the  unrealities  of  outworn  phil- 
osophic speculations  it  shows  by  its  works  its 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  121 

abiding  and  inspiring  faith  that  man  is  made 
to  seek  until  he  finds,  to  knock  and  it  shall  be 
opened  unto  him;  and  thus  confessing  before 
the  world  its  working-faith,  it  brings  to  relig- 
ion itself  new  witness  to  the  inestimable  worth 
of  our  personal  being  in  a  realm  of  ends;  nay, 
more,  it  offers  the  argument  of  its  own  high 
calling  that  the  universe  which  has  brought  it 
to  the  birth  shall  not  in  the  end  turn  upon  it 
and  devour  it.  Amid  existing  tendencies  to- 
ward commercializing  education;  when  to  go 
through  college  is  not  always  to  acquire  the 
power  to  think;  when  in  the.  world  outside, 
and  even  in  a  church-atmosphere  too  enerva- 
ting for  high  argument  of  divinity,  the  intellec- 
tual pursuit  of  truth  may  seem  a  lonely  walk, 
and  few  to  meet  one  in  that  way;  when  the 
pews  count  it  a  gain  that  theological  preach- 
ing is  become  a  lost  art,  and  ministers  them- 
selves may  be  tempted  to  rest  content  in  call- 
ing all  men  brethren,  unmindful  of  humanities' 
profoundest  cry:  "Show  us  the  Father,  and  it 
is  enough":  to  us,  I  would  say,  at  this  time, 
scientific  spirituality  may  come  with  a  clear 
call  and  a  noble  passion,  and  bid  us  once  and 


122  CONSTRUCTIVE 

again  seek  for  the  truth  of  the  living  God  with 
all  our  mind  and  with  all  our  strength;  for  in 
fulfilling  these  words  of  the  commandment  one 
may  love  also  with  all  his  heart. 

The  stricter  intellectual  discipline  of  scien- 
tific thinking,  issuing,  as  it  does,  in  a  nobler 
sense  of  the  intellectual  worth  of  life,  may  re- 
new our  faith  in  man's  survival  value,  and 
create  for  the  eager  scientific  spirit  a  new  sym- 
bolism for  the  future  life.  Fitting  symbols  for 
the  future  reward  and  joyous  activity  of  the 
scientific  spirit  hereafter  would  hardly  be  those 
of  the  Hebrew-Christian  Apocalypse,  which  to 
believers  of  old  represented  the  values  of  life  laid 
up  in  heaven.  Not  the  celestial  city  with  gates 
of  pearl  and  streets  of  gold  would  be  the  sym- 
bol of  the  intellectual  immortality  and  satisfac- 
tion of  the  pure  scientific  spirit;  to  it  rather 
the  least  particle  of  earthiness  that  leaves  mat- 
ter nearest  the  creative  power,  the  last  perfec- 
tion of  matter  in  the  wondrous  organization  of 
the  human  brain,  and  the  lines  of  the  spec- 
troscope that  bid  us  understand  that  this 
earth  of  ours  is  consubstantial  with  all  the  ce- 
lestial spheres — these  and  such  visible  signs  as 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  123 

these  of  the  things  waiting  to  be  revealed  shall 
be  the  evidence  and  the  symbols  of  the  glory 
of  the  knowledge  of  God  that  passeth  knowl- 
edge. The  image  of  a  worthy  scientific  hope 
of  the  life  hereafter  would  not  be  the  seraph 
with  harp  of  sweetest  tone,  but  rather  one  like 
that  other  angel  whom  Saint  John  saw  "stand- 
ing in  the  sun"  at  the  centre  and  source  of  light 
ineffable,  with  undimmed  eye  gazing  the  whole 
circle  of  the  heavens  round,  and  calling  to  all 
the  stars. 

Scientific  spirituality  may  not  indeed  be 
clothed  outwardly  in  such  religious  habit  as 
we  might  deem  desirable;  but  who  shall  say 
that  it  is  not  worthy,  and  great  shall  be  its 
reward.  Its  presence  among  us  may  enhance 
our  religious  conception  of  the  worth  of  life 
here  and  hereafter. 


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